It has been brought to H&C News’ attention that HMRC are increasingly using emails to contact and remind taxpayers of outstanding returns and payments, with resulting improvements in speed and efficiency. Hospitality is a major employer, which means that many staff will be recipients.
However, HMRC are increasingly worried that their emails will be confused with phishing emails and either ignored and deleted, or that taxpayers – your staff – will open phishing mail and act on it.
It will therefore be useful for hospitality employers to know – and advise staff, where necessary – that HMRC has developed a three point protocol /set of rules:
- HMRC emails will simply remind a taxpayer to file a return or pay tax, or notify a general change.
- HMRC emails will never contain financial information such as details of outstanding payments or tax refunds due. So emails will never show any figures – nor will they have active links – no “click here to find out more”.
- You will never need to open an HMRC email any further than the first message that appears.
Emails from HMRC will always show the department’s logo and the taxpayer’s full name as
shown on their records.
The next big issue of email reminders from HMRC will be to people who have not submitted a 2013/14 tax return or have not paid the tax due on 31st January….