Quantcast
Menu
Save, make, understand money

Household Bills

HMRC issues self-assessment scam warning

Joanna Faith
Written By:
Joanna Faith
Posted:
Updated:
20/11/2019

HMRC has issued a warning about scams in the run up to the self-assessment deadline.

The tax authority said it had received nearly 900,000 reports from the public over the past year about suspicious HMRC phone calls, texts or emails.

More than 100,000 of these were phone scams, while over 620,000 were about bogus tax rebates.

The most common scams involve fraudsters phoning taxpayers offering a fake tax refund, or pretending to be HMRC by texting or emailing a link which will take customers to a false page, where their bank details and money will be stolen.

Fraudsters have also threatened victims with arrest or imprisonment if a bogus tax bill is not paid immediately.

Millions of people need to submit a self-assessment tax return by the 31 January deadline.

These include self-employed workers and anyone earning an annual income over £100,000.

HMRC said it will never contact customers asking for their PIN, password or bank details.

Customers should also never give out private information, reply to text messages, download attachments or click on links in texts or emails they are not expecting.

You can report any suspicious calls or emails to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk and texts to 60599.