In a press release issued over the weekend, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has revealed that it has saved taxpayers some \u00a32.4 million by cracking down on \u2018call forwarding\u2019 scams.<\/p>\n
The news comes in line with Scams Awareness Month, which will run throughout June.<\/p>\n
According to the tax authority, fraudsters are increasingly attempting to extract funds from unsuspecting taxpayers by tricking them into calling external, premium rate numbers in order to make contact with HMRC.<\/p>\n
Victims are re-directed to bogus websites which \u201clook similar to HMRC\u2019s official site\u201d and then encouraged to call non-HMRC telephone numbers \u201cwith extortionate costs\u201d in order to get in touch with an HMRC adviser.<\/p>\n
These \u201ccall forwarding services\u201d are costing taxpayers dear \u2013 as HMRC\u2019s official helplines will always be either free or \u201clow cost\u201d to phone, it says.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the tax authority claims that in recent months, it has \u201csuccessfully challenged the ownership of these websites\u201d and \u201ctaken them out of the hands of cheats.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a direct result of its efforts, HMRC estimates that it has saved members of the public \u201cat least\u201d \u00a32.4 million.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the good news, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mel Stride, said: \u201cWe know that HMRC is the most spoofed Government brand as criminals try to take advantage of the fact that everyone has some involvement with the tax authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this particular case, scammers try to dupe the public into paying large sums for services that are available for free or low cost. This is a brazen con, charging premium rates whilst simply redirecting calls to the real HMRC numbers that are available at low or no cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a testament to the hard work of HMRC that they have prevented criminals extracting \u00a32.4 million from the public.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a press release issued over the weekend, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has revealed that it has saved taxpayers some \u00a32.4 million by cracking down on \u2018call forwarding\u2019 scams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,7,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2468,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}