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How to tell a real HMRC letter from a scam

Fahad ZarCrypto tax accountant, licensed and regulated by the AAT. MSc Accounting and Finance, BPP University London. Six years reconciling wallet and exchange histories for UK filings.

Published 2 August 2026· Reviewed against gov.uk 25 August 2026· 4 min read·HMRC and compliance

Thirty seconds is enough to sort most of them. A genuine HMRC message never threatens arrest, never demands payment by gift card or transfer to a “safe account”, and never offers a refund in exchange for your card details. If the message does any of those things, you are done reading it.

The harder cases are the careful fakes that copy HMRC’s tone properly, so here is the full sorting method, straight from what HMRC itself publishes and what lands in our clients’ inboxes.

The tells, in order of reliability

HMRC’s own scam identification guidance gives a checklist, and it holds up. Be suspicious of any contact that rushes you, threatens you, arrives unexpectedly, asks for personal or bank information, tells you to transfer money, or offers a refund, rebate or grant.

Two of those deserve underlining. Urgency is the scammer’s core tool, because a person given time to think checks things. And the refund lure is the most common shape of all, because who does not want £278.44 back from the taxman? HMRC does issue refunds. It does not ask for your bank details by text to pay them, because it already has a process that does not need them.

On the phone, the line is even brighter. HMRC will not leave a voicemail threatening legal action, and it will not threaten arrest. The aggressive robocall saying a warrant has been issued in your name is a scam every single time.

What makes this confusing

HMRC genuinely does send text messages to some taxpayers, genuinely does email, and genuinely does ring people. So “HMRC never texts” is not a usable rule. The usable rule is about content, not channel. Real messages point you to GOV.UK to sign in through your own account. Fake ones carry links to sites that ask you to enter things. If a message contains a link and a request for details, treat the link as radioactive and go to GOV.UK by typing it yourself.

Letters get faked too, less often but more convincingly. The scam letters we have seen borrow real letterheads and real-sounding reference numbers. The giveaway is nearly always the payment instruction, an account name that is not HMRC, a demand for immediate settlement, a mobile number to call. When in doubt, look up the relevant HMRC department’s number yourself on GOV.UK and ask whether the reference exists. Never use the contact details printed on the thing you are doubting. We wrote more about telling routine letters from serious ones in our guide to HMRC letters.

Where to send the fakes

Forward scam emails to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk. Forward scam texts to 60599. Both go to HMRC’s security team, and the reporting genuinely feeds takedowns. If you have actually lost money, report it through Action Fraud, or by calling 101 in Scotland, and tell your bank immediately because speed changes what can be recovered.

If you already clicked

Entering details on a fake site is recoverable if you move fast. Contact your bank first, change your Government Gateway password second, and watch your tax account for changes you did not make, because harvested details get used to redirect genuine refunds. Nothing about having been caught changes your actual tax position, and HMRC’s phishing reporting page covers the follow-up steps.

Fahad Zar

Crypto tax accountantAAT licensed 1010475

• AAT Licensed Accountant and MAAT, licence 1010475
• MSc Accounting and Finance, BPP University London
• Six years inside digital asset accounting, across several crypto tax firms
• Practises through Zar Enterprises Ltd, ICO registration ZC225094
• Supervised for anti-money laundering by the AAT

What matters to me is that the number on the return is true, whatever it turns out to be.

Whether this is worth a conversation

Most people who read this page do not need an accountant. A few do.

• A letter from HMRC has arrived
• You have years HMRC does not know about
• HMRC's figures do not match yours

If your letter is a routine tax code notice and your filings are current, you probably just needed this page.

If one of these is you, the first look costs nothing.

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