Don't be tempted by this HMRC 'refund' scam
It's that time of year when scammers target those submitting their tax return.
There are just a few hours left to send in self assessment tax returns without incurring a £100 penalty. On past history, well over 100,000 people will get their returns in just in time, while the best part of a million people will fail and fork out fines.
As well as the form, you have to pay the tax you owe. It can be both a tough call to find the cash.
Getting an email that promises a tax rebate of £425.65 sounds attractive in this context. It's a scam, of course, but as long as it takes in a few people, then the fraudsters will have a field day. And the “refund” offered is greater than the same fraud last year, when the scam emails I saw generally offered figures of around £250.
Why it's convincing
For those who fall for it, it could well be their only contact with “HMRC”. For in the name of “efficiency savings”, the taxman appears to have given up on sending out printed details of individual accounts, though they remain online if you can find them.
The result is that if you inadvertently overpaid - which is easy enough to do given the system's refusal to use jargon-free language - you may only discover this when you fill in the latest form.
Even then, instead of it being a credit which appears at the end of the calculation, you have to apply for it. So if you have overpaid £500, and this time you owe £5,000, it does not come up as a £4,500 payment. The convoluted route is to pay £5,000 and then apply for the £500 as a repayment. It's all legal and above board, but it's a racket perpetrated on those who don't won't or can't pay for accountants.
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The scam email
Back to the dodgy email. It reads:
Re: Tax Refund Notification
Our record indicates that you have overpaid tax. Therefore, eligible to receive a tax refund of 425.65 GBP. To reclaim overpaid tax you must submit a tax refund request and allow us 2-3 weeks in order to process it.
In order to process your refund you will need to complete the attached application form. Download the attached form with this email and complete the form.
When might you have overpaid tax through your job?
You may have paid too much tax if:
- you started a new job and had an emergency tax code for a while
- your employer was using the wrong tax code
Note : A refund can be delayed a variety of reasons, for example submitting invalid records or applying after deadline.
Yours Sincerely,
HM Revenue & Customs
Yes, it appears to come from HMRC. The email includes a genuine HMRC address in Southend-on-Sea, plus some lines from the real HMRC website. The use of GBP instead of the pound sign is a dead giveaway that this is a scam though, as is the bad grammar. And, besides the fact that HMRC never communicates in this way, the email was sent by sh1ca1b1@inebraska.com, which hardly sounds like a friendly tax inspector!
The attachment is a standard phishing fraud designed to capture card details. It asks for name, date of birth, mother's maiden name (used in many security questions), credit or debit card number complete with the three figure security code. And to make it look real, the scam merchants have copied the Mastercard and Visa logos.
With all that information, they can go shopping online with few worries.
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More on scams:
Scam victims who got their money back
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Comments
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We've just received one of these. This one is from HMRC Gateway [jUPFOKX@david17.orangehome.co.uk] and if we click on the link in the message we can reclaim 468.50 GBP, it says. The standard of English is better than in some scam messages I receive, though not perfect. It warns me that payment can take 5 - 7 business days, which is presumably the amount of time the scammer thinks will net him a useful quantity of personal details. The last part of his email address ought to make it possible to have him tracked down, but unfortunately I don't know how to set about that.
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Unfortunately, while it's true that HMRC will not send emails about refunds, starting this year they are sending some emails: "HMRC will send you 2 types of email: • verification that your email address works, this is sent immediately after you’ve signed up to the message service • telling you when there’s a new message for you So they have at least opened up the possibility that emails really can come from HMRC.
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If lots of people responded to these scam phishing emails by completing the form with entirely fictitious - but apparently plausible - details, the fraudsters would be inundated with personal data that they could not use. Would this not make it much more difficult for them to identify the few misguided souls who put their own information ? Or can anyone see objections to this?
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02 February 2015