Tax Tip-Offs Are A Plague in the UK. This Country Broke the Record

A Record for Tax Tip-Offs Belongs to the UK

Price Bailey, one of the UK’s largest accounting firms, recently published intriguing data. According to a report in The Telegraph, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) received a record 164,670 tip-offs in the 2024/25 tax year. This is nine percent more than the previous year. Why are tax tip-offs so popular in the UK?

How Much Can You Earn for a Tax Tip-Off in the UK and USA?

HMRC pays rewards to citizens for reporting tax evasion cases. The exact amounts for a single tip-off are not made public, but we do know the overall value. In the 2023/24 tax year, it was over 978,000 pounds, nearly twice as much as the year before. The 2024/25 period, despite a record number of tip-offs, saw a decrease in the amount paid to whistleblowers, totalling just under 852,500 pounds.

The reward system is part of HMRC’s efforts to close the tax gap as much as possible. According to government data from The Telegraph, the tax gap was a staggering 46.8 billion pounds in the 2023/24 tax year. Tax evasion accounts for 6.4 billion pounds of that amount, and this figure is growing year by year. Andrew Park from Price Bailey noted in The Telegraph that a new system is needed to encourage people to report tax fraud in order to improve these statistics. British Treasury plans aim to add 7.5 billion pounds annually to the budget by 2030 through the detection of such cases.

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Can the Tip-Off System Close the Tax Gap?

To achieve this goal, HMRC is planning to reform its reward system for reporting tax crimes. The UK is looking for inspiration from across the ocean. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States also pays people for tip-offs. However, the procedure is much more transparent, as whistleblowers receive a specific percentage of the funds recovered for the budget thanks to the information they provided.

HMRC wants to go a similar route. For now, it is unclear how much money a person could receive for a tip-off. According to Macfarlanes, a financial sector firm, it could be from five to thirty percent of the amount that reaches the Treasury thanks to the information. At the same time, the reform aims to reduce the scale of tax crimes involving large sums of money. We can assume that the payment to whistleblowers will only be made when the revenue generated for the budget from the tip-off reaches a certain threshold.

Comparison with Poland. How Many Tip-Offs Reach the Polish Tax Office?

For comparison, according to data collected by Fakt, Polish tax offices received about 46,000 “signal reports,” or simply tip-offs, in 2023. Meanwhile, in the UK, the 2023/24 tax year saw about 152,000 such cases. The population of the UK is nearly twice as large as the population of Poland, yet they exceed us more than three times in terms of tax tip-offs. Why is this happening? As the old saying goes, when it’s not clear what’s going on, it’s about money.

In Poland, you don’t really get anything for filing a report with the Tax Office. In some cases, a person may be entitled to whistleblower protection. Tip-offs can also be anonymous, so the person you reported theoretically won’t find out who gave the information. However, if you are looking for more than relative safety and a sense of satisfaction, you will be deeply disappointed. The situation is different in the UK, where citizens can receive a payment for reporting irregularities.

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