Every April and May, taxpayers are inundated with fraudsters purporting to be HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Refund scams circulate as it coincides with HMRC legitimately processing tax rebates.<\/p>\n
HMRC have issued a warning to young people who are unfamiliar with the tax system to be vigilant about potential scams, with fraudsters increasing the number of scams as tax returns are filed.<\/p>\n
250,000 tax scams were reported to HMRC in April and May last year, and HMRC requested that over 6,000 phishing websites be deactivated.<\/p>\n
Messages including voicemails, text messages, and hoaxed calls are intended to encourage people to divulge personal information by promising payment in the form of a tax rebate. The scam is hosted on a fake government website, where they attempt to steal money and personal data.<\/p>\n
Angela MacDonald, head of customer services at HMRC, said: \u2018We are determined to protect honest people from these fraudsters who will stop at nothing to make their phishing scams appear legitimate.<\/p>\n
\u2018HMRC is currently shutting down hundreds of phishing sites a month. If you receive one of these emails or texts, don\u2019t respond and report it to HMRC so that more online criminals are stopped in their tracks.\u2019<\/p>\n
When taxpayers file their tax returns to HMRC, they subsequently receive a tax calculation along with an email telling them to check their personal tax accounts. Because many taxpayers file self-assessment returns, HMRC contact most people after January.<\/p>\n
If somebody has paid too much tax, HMRC will then issue the rebate automatically. This will either go directly into their bank account unless they indicate otherwise, then a cheque will be sent. If tax has been underpaid, HMRC will inform the individual how much they owe and instruct them on how to securely pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every April and May, taxpayers are inundated with fraudsters purporting to be HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Refund scams circulate as it coincides with HMRC legitimately processing tax rebates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,68,7,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993"}],"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=2993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2994,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions\/2994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}