Written question asked by Dominic Raab (Conservative) on Friday, 23 January 2015, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 28 January 2015 (named day). It was answered by David Gauke (Conservative) on Thursday, 26 March 2015 on behalf of the Treasury.

Fraud: Taxation

Question: To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the (a) number of cheques sent to HM Revenue and Customs that were fraudulently intercepted and (b) value of these cheques in each month since December 2013.

Answer

The table below sets out the information requested where it is alleged that cheques intended for HMRC were fraudulently intercepted with context comparing these cases with the total number of cheques and related value processed by HMRC.

Year	Month	No. of cases reported	Value of cases	Total cheques banked Dec 13 - Dec 14
2013	December	19	£37,125.42	Volume	5,765,106
2014	January	12	£17,889.40	Value	£22,127,227,566
	February	9	£28,082.49
	March	37	£106,859.00	Stolen cheques as a percentage
	April	11	£18,496.89	Volume	0.0032%
	May	14	£29,668.29	Value	0.0017%
	June	15	£60,297.28
	July	20	£28,223.64
	August	19	£24,241.32
	September	8	£11,732.22
	October	7	£7,135.32
	November	9	£7,799.25
	December	3	£8,747.92
		183	£386,298.44

HMRC encourages customers, through Internet and other guidance material not to pay by cheque and to take advantage of more secure payment methods and pay electronically.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 221869
Session: 2014-15
Subjects: Fraud Taxation
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.parliament.uk

Fraud: Taxation

Secondary information

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