HMRC issues terrifying update as 100,000 UK taxpayers have accounts frozen | Personal Finance | Finance

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has issued a terrifying update to roughly 100,000 Brits after the Government lost £47m when evidence of “ogranised crime phishing” was detected in their accounts.

Taxpayers affected by the fraud sting will receive letters between today and the end of June, which will prompt them to change their Government Gateway login details. John-Paul Marks, the chief executive of HMRC, told the Treasury Select Committee: “It’s about 0.2% of the PAYE population, around 100,000 people, who we have written to, are writing to, to notify them that we detected activity on their PAYE account.”

Asked whether the applied to individual working people’s PAYE accounts, not companies, he replied: “That’s right, individuals. To be clear, no financial loss to those individuals. This was organised crime phishing for identity data outwith of HMRC systems.”

It comes as HMRC call centres were hit by a mass power outage on Wednesday, with panicked callers receiving an automated message: “This phone line is temporarily unavailable due to technical difficulties but normal service will resume as soon as possible.”

HMRC’s deputy chief executive and second permanent secretary Angela MacDonald added: “At the moment, they’ve managed to extract repayments to the tune of £47 million. Now that is a lot of money and it’s very unacceptable. We have overall, in the last tax year, we actually protected £1.9 billion worth of money which sought to be taken from us by attacks.”

Mr Marks also confirmed that HMRC phone lines were also currently down. He said: “Something has disrupted those telephone lines and we are expecting them to be back up and available in the morning.”

An spokesman for HMRC said: “We’ve acted to protect customers after identifying attempts to access a very small minority of tax accounts and we’re working with other law enforcement agencies both in the UK and overseas to bring those responsible to justice.

“This was not a cyber attack – it involved criminals using personal information from phishing activity or data obtained elsewhere to try to claim money from HMRC. We’re writing to those customers affected to reassure them we’ve secured their accounts and that they haven’t lost any money.”