It has come to our attention that there are fake HMRC VAT acknowledgement emails in circulation.
‘Phishing’ is the fraudulent act of emailing a person with the purpose of obtaining their personal/financial information such as passwords, credit card or bank account details.
We realise that you will inevitably receive a large amount of correspondence from HMRC but we would always urge you to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
In this particular case the differences between the genuine and fake emails are said to be the following:
- The file size is too large – 11kb rather than the usual 10KB or less
- They have a file attached – the genuine emails do not. We strongly advise you to not open this attachment.
- There is a spelling error in the title of the attachment – ‘VAT returns repot’ instead of ‘report’
If you think you may have received a scam/fake email we would strongly advise that you send an email to the HMRC phishing team at
and inform them of your concerns.
More guidance and information can be found on the HMRC website via the following links.
Report suspicious emails or websites
Examples of Phishing and Scam emails.
April 12th, 2013
