Fraudsters are trying to coax nine million people affected by self-assessment into revealing their financial details by masquerading as HMRC.
Letters and e-mails purporting to be from the department are arriving in front of taxpayers just in time for the September 30 deadline for getting their tax calculated.
Last year, the tax authority’s website listed just one known scam, deployed to target taxpayers looking out for HMRC reminders, this year it lists nine.
Now crooks have become more sophisticated: Revenue & Customs said yesterday that telephone numbers referenced on the correspondence are manned by the criminals.
A spokesman for HMRC told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s very disturbing that fraudsters are using our good name to get money out of people.
“The letters or e-mails claim that the taxpayer is either owed tax or has outstanding tax to pay, and ask for a card or account details.”
This in itself should alert savvy taxpayers, as HMRC does not accept payment by credit card, nor does it send unsolicited e-mails asking a taxpayer for personal information, financial or otherwise.
The department has advised taxpayers that e-mails purporting to come from its offices containing an embedded link should be treated as suspicious, and no data should be inputted.
Last month, HMRC updated its online page of scam warnings to alert taxpayers to bogus correspondence claiming the government agency wanted to issue recipients with a tax rebate.
Officials want taxpayers who suspect they have received bogus HMRC letters or emails which are not on its alert list to forward it to domains@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk so action can be taken.
Sep 17, 2007
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