Business owners are being urged by HMRC to be careful of anyone approaching them claiming to be from them. Scams have doubled since the start of the pandemic amid the confusion of lockdowns and support schemes ...
We were reading a blog post by local accountant Roger Eddowes recently and it made us ill at ease. We've all had those text messages and emails haven't we? Some of us even get automated phone calls threatening to arrest us unless we press 1 to pay now.
Roger's blog post said that in the last year, HMRC has:
Had over a million referrals from the public about potential scams
Worked with Ofcom and other telecoms providers to ban nearly 2,500 telephone numbers scammers are using
Received nearly half a million reports of phone scams
Reported over 13,000 malicious websites for takedown
So, HMRC is on the case, but the scam reports keep rolling in.
To its credit, HMRC has published its own webpage to help taxpayers check out if a contact is genuine or not. HMRC has changed text numbers recently, but the page also explains how various other forms of contact will be made for various projects.
If you are unsure if the contact you have received from HMRC is genuine, do check the page, but under no circumstances, give a callers personal information such as your bank account, credit or debit card details to any caller.
And certainly don't click any links unless you're absolutely sure.