Fraudulent Tax Return Amendments

We have recently become aware of a fraudulent tax refund being claimed on behalf of a client, with the money being paid to a third party.

Some firms will offer to obtain a tax refund for you. While some of these firms may be genuine, others may submit inaccurate refund claims to HMRC on your behalf. They often charge a fee based on the size of the refund and quite often insist that the refund is paid to them, leaving you to chase your money (after they have deducted their commission). Unfortunately, if the refund claim is incorrect, HMRC may initially pay the refund, but ask for it back later – from you!

As a variation on this theme, some fraudulent claims are made purporting to be for your company and you are not aware until you receive a notice from HMRC saying they have paid a refund to ‘your agent’.  If in doubt, please contact us.

At this time of year, the number of tax related scams increases due to the January personal tax deadline and the large number of Corporation Tax deadlines falling on 31 December. Most are sent via text and email but HMRC will never send you an email telling you that you are due a tax refund. So if you get an email about a tax refund, it will not be from HMRC.

In addition, HMRC will never ask for personal or payment information by email.

So if you get an email about a tax refund and it appears to be from HMRC, then it is going to be a fake.

HMRC has collated some examples of fake refund emails, and you can download the HMRC guide to phishing and bogus emails from the  HMRC website pages.

Some of these fake emails are very sophisticated and even contain the HMRC logo and colours.