HMRC has been accused of a "grotesque waste of taxpayer money" after it emerged that more than £600,000 has been paid to civil servants to cover their heating costs while "working" from home.
Utility bill subsidies for home-working HMRC staff have more than doubled since 2022, rising from £95,000 to £211,000 in 2026.
Over the four financial years ending April 2026, the department spent more than £610,000 on energy bill payments for its remote workers, The Telegraph revealed.
Only contractual home workers qualify for the subsidies, but the true cost across the entire civil service is likely to skyrocket even further.
As the third largest Government department by headcount, HMRC's figures represent just a fraction of the potential total.
The spending has been braneded a "tough pill to swallow" for ordinary Britons struggling with their own rising energy costs.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood said: "With energy bills soaring thanks to Labour's Net Zero obsession, hard-working families have enough on their plate without having to shell out for hand-outs to public servants."
Reform UK's Danny Kruger said: "This grotesque waste of taxpayer money will be a tough pill to swallow for hard-working Brits forced to pay sky-high energy bills every single month.
"While ordinary families struggle with the cost of living, Whitehall mandarins use public cash to subsidise the bills they drove through the roof with their dogmatic Net Zero obsession."
A Freedom of Information request revealed that 5,259 HMRC staff are designated home workers of the department's 75,898 civil servants.
An HMRC spokesman said: "These payments only apply to about seven per cent of our workforce who are contractual homeworkers whose designated workplace is their home.
"They are not available to staff working under HMRC's hybrid working arrangements."
The Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice follow HMRC in terms of staff numbers, suggesting the overall bill for home-working energy subsidies across Whitehall could be considerably larger than what HMRC alone has spent.
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It comes after the TaxPayers' Alliance revealed that more than 350 civil servants had been granted permission to work remotely from holiday destinations like Spain, Greece, Australia and even Brazil.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero accounted for more than a third of the 359 staff who logged on from overseas.
A further 96 worked for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, 83 for the Department for Business and Trade, and 19 for the Department for Transport.
The TPA accused Whitehall of enabling "taxpayer-funded globe-trotting" after a YouGov poll found one in five Britons cannot afford a foreign holiday this year.
The Cabinet Office insisted that overseas working was only approved in "exceptional circumstances" such as bereavement, and that the figures included staff "who must travel abroad for their job".
The Civil Service has in the past also been accused of covering up how many staff are really working from home.
Whitehall insists its offices are fully-staffed - claiming occupancy levels of up to 100 per cent.
But critics said civil servants are still clocking in remotely and have accused the Government of "gaming the system".
Experts pointed to data which focuses on the number of desks in a departmental HQ, rather than the proportion of the workforce in the office.
The occupancy level refers to the number of desks in a building, but as there are many more staff than desks, a department can claim 100 per cent attendance even if a significant portion of employees have not left their home.
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