Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

Revenue and Customs investigates 'bogus P86' letters

by
26th Apr 2005
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

HM Revenue and Customs has warned British employers whose employees have worked overseas to be on their guard against bogus letters, purporting to be from the revenue department, which request the recipient's bank details.

The recipient is asked to return a completed form to "The Central Tax Unit, Kensington House, 33, Imperial Square, Cheltenham", according to reports.

But this is a "brass plate" address only, and letters are reported to have been forwarded to Lagos in Nigeria, in what is understood to be a variation of the Nigerian "419 fraud".

The Telegraph quoted Mike Warburton, tax partner at Grant Thornton, as saying: "They picked the top spot for a business to trade in Cheltenham. It sounds irreproachable."

Warburton, who visited the bogus address, added: "I was told by two very nice middle-aged ladies that all the letters have been sent to Nigeria. That was until they received a visit from the police last week, who said that all letters must now be handed to them."

Anita Monteith, technical manager at the ICAEW's Tax Faculty, told the Telegraph: "This is an outrageous scam. Seasoned tax experts would spot it but it wouldn't be obvious to the man in the street. The Revenue should have publicised this to the press and general public as soon as they became aware of it."

The paper quoted an HMRC spokesman as saying: "We are looking at our strategy of how we can convey the message to get this information to cascade to the fraudsters' target audience."

Monteith told TaxZone that she was "a little surprised" that the Tax Faculty had not heard directly from HMRC about the scam.

An HMRC spokeswoman told TaxZone on 24 April that one bogus letter dated 17 January 2005 was sent by the recipient to the Inland Revenue in February.

More recently, a British company with several employees working abroad alerted HMRC to an undisclosed number of letters of a similar nature.

The spokeswoman said HMRC is not aware of any further such letters. But in the light of that information HMRC decided to alert employers with employees most likely to be targeted.

Shirley Davies, deputy director of HMRC's Complex Personal Tax Teams, wrote on 19 April to members of the Forum of Expatriate Tax and NICs. The recipients were reported to include six major accounting firms, the CBI, and several of Britain's largest employers including ICI, Shell, Unilever, AstraZeneca, WH Smith and BP.

Davies wrote: "Some [taxpayers] have received a letter purporting to be from the Inland Revenue and which asks them to provide information concerning their status as 'Not Ordinarily Resident in the UK'. The letter encloses a form P86 which is not the standard IR form and which asks for personal Bank Account and Sort Code details.

"Please note that these letters have not been issued by the Inland Revenue and are clearly bogus. The letter is signed by a Fiona Delaney but there is no such person working within the Inland Revenue. The IR logo, the phone and fax numbers and the address on the letterhead, are all false."

Davies suggested that employees receiving such letters ignore them, and that employers report the incident to the police.

HMRC and police investigations are continuing. The HMRC spokeswoman said the department is concerned that people do not worry unnecessarily.

The logo on the 17 January letter was "very, very old" and the style of the letter was "wrong". "Most accountants would have looked at it and thought, 'this is odd'," she added.

Andrew Goodall
Editor, TaxZone

Tags:

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.