Pension scammers are appearing with impunity as few have ever been held to account, in line with business physique The Pension Scams Trade Group (PSIG).
The Authorities and HMRC aren’t doing sufficient to cease pension scams and help victims, in line with Margaret Snowdon OBE, Chair of the PSIG.
She claimed in a speech outdoors Downing Avenue yesterday that HMRC and the Authorities have acted like bullies of their therapy of pension rip-off victims.
She stated: “HMRC and the federal government additionally blamed the victims, however worse than that, they assumed that each one victims had been responsible of making an attempt to keep away from tax. That is removed from the reality. Extraordinary individuals don’t perceive complicated pension guidelines they usually actually don’t affiliate pensions with tax, not to mention tax avoidance. None the much less, HMRC treats all of them as in the event that they had been responsible of dishonest the tax man.
“Due to this fact, on prime of dropping most of their financial savings, HMRC has pursued them for tax fees for over a decade; and has pursued them in an unnecessarily aggressive means. Now to be truthful to HMRC, their job is to gather tax that’s due. They are saying they don’t have any selection, however it’s by no means cheap to bully and frighten individuals and deal with them criminals with none proof. It’s a case of when you have got a hammer, the whole lot seems like a nail.”
She referred to as on the Authorities to vary pension taxation legal guidelines to present HMRC the facility to disapply tax fees in instances the place losses had been as a consequence of dishonesty by a 3rd celebration.
In her speech she stated PSIG have considerations about suicides, bankruptcies, hardship and extreme welfare points amongst victims of pension scams as a consequence of HMRC’s deal with recovering tax from the taxpayer reasonably than from the fraudsters.
The information, obtained by means of FOI requests, confirmed there have been nearly 100,000 victims of funding fraud between 2020 and 2023.
The Pension Scams Trade Group is a voluntary physique created by the pensions business to assist share good observe and scale back the danger of scams by means of persistently utilized sensible due diligence and sharing info on real-time rip-off threats and developments.