HM Revenue & Customs is warning taxpayers due to submit self-assessment contractor tax returns on January 31st to be wary of fraudsters that operate using bogus phone calls, text messages or email.
The tax authority received nearly 900,000 reports over the past year from the public about suspicious contact, of which 620,000 were falsely offering tax rebates and 100,000 were phone scams to freelancers or contract workers.
Last January, 10.8 million taxpayers filed self-assessment tax returns, of which 10.1 million were filed online. Most people who have tax deducted automatically from their wages, pensions or savings will not need to complete a tax return unless they have received additional income which has not had tax deducted from it, such as contractor tax for freelance jobs or other contract work.
People need to complete a tax return if they:
- earned more than £2,500 from renting out property
- their partner received Child Benefit and either of them had an annual income of more than £50,000
- received more than £2,500 in other untaxed income, for example from tips or commission
- are self-employed sole traders, freelancers or contract workers
- are employees claiming expenses in excess of £2,500
- have an annual income over £100,000
- earned income from abroad that they need to pay tax on
According to HMRC, some of the most common techniques fraudsters use include phoning taxpayers offering a fake contractor tax refund, or pretending to be HMRC by texting or emailing a link which will take taxpayers to a false page, where their bank details and money will be stolen. Fraudsters are also known to threaten victims with arrest or imprisonment if a bogus contractor tax bill is not paid immediately.
Genuine organisations like HMRC and banks will never contact customers asking for their PIN, password or bank details. Customers should never give out private information, reply to text messages, download attachments or click on links in texts or emails that they are not expecting. HMRC does have a specialist team to identify and close down scams but it also wants contractor taxpayers to be able to recognise the hallmarks of a scam to avoid becoming victims themselves.
HMRC is asking people who receive suspicious correspondence or phone calls claiming to be from the tax authority to forward details of the incident to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk and texts to 60599. And taxpayers who suffer financial loss due to falling victim to a scam can contact the Police’s Action Fraud team on 0300 123 2040, or use their online fraud reporting tool.
More information has been published on GOV.UK on how to avoid and report scams and recognise genuine HMRC contact. Anyone that thinks they have received an HMRC-related phishing email or text message can check it against examples of genuine HMRC messages listed on that page.
20th November 2019.
