NEWS

Recognising Genuine HMRC Contact

HMRC have updated their guidance on how to recognise genuine contact from them and how to spot a phishing email or scam call.

Phishing is the fraudulent act of emailing a person in order to obtain personal or financial information such as passwords and credit card or bank account details. 

The guidance contains a list of current digital and other contact issued from HMRC with details of its purpose and dates when the contact is live.

It also has information on how to tell if an email is fraudulent and what to look out for. Indicators may include, for example, a requirement for urgent action, a link to a website that looks like the homepage of the HMRC website and a common greeting.  Recipients should also be wary of attachments as they may contain viruses.

HMRC reminds taxpayers that it will not send emails that:

• Notify of a tax rebate
• Offer a tax repayment
• Ask the individual to disclose personal information such as their postal address, unique taxpayer reference or bank account details
• Provide a non-HMRC personal email as a response address
• Ask for financial information, eg a specific figure in a tax computation, unless the taxpayer has given prior consent and accepted the risks
• Contain attachments, unless the taxpayer has given prior consent and accepted the risks.

The full HMRC guidance (updated 7 December 2018) can be found here

03/01/2019