Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking to tackle scam calls claiming to be from HMRC alleging an unpaid tax bill and threatening arrest.

HMRC take protecting taxpayers seriously; as a result of recent work they have dropped from the third to 146th most phished brand in the world in the five years to 2019. This resulted in an increase in reports of fraudulent HMRC branded telephone calls. HMRC operate a suspicious telephone contact referral service on GOV.UK, provide a suspicious e-mail referral service at phishing@hmrc.gov.uk, and a suspicious SMS referral service using the ‘60599’ SMS short code.

HMRC operates a dedicated Customer Protection team to prevent, detect and respond to frauds abusing the HMRC brand. HMRC work closely with the telecoms industry and Ofcom to block malicious phone numbers, and in the last 12 months, HMRC reported 2,687 phone numbers being used in tax-related phone scams to telecommunication companies to be taken down, and responded to more than 278,000 reports of telephone scams from the public.

Intelligence indicates these frauds are organised and conducted mainly outside of the UK jurisdiction, and HMRC are working with law enforcement and partner tax authorities nationally and internationally to reduce the harm from tax-branded voice scams.

HMRC support and lead UK investigations as appropriate. In July 2020, four individuals were arrested as part of an investigation into a suspected multi-million-pound phone scam targeting UK taxpayers. HM Revenue and Customs officers carried out searches at five addresses in East and West London on Tuesday 28 July. £10,000 in cash was seized along with a quantity of laptop and desktop computers, mobile phones and SIM cards.