Trading Standards in East Renfrewshire is warning residents to be vigilant when filling in their tax returns this year, after a large amount of complaints in 2014 when residents fell victim to so called ‘copycat’ web sites.

These websites look very similar to the genuine www.gov.uk website.

However, they will charge for forwarding the details innocent residents provide them with to the correct email address.

Alarmingly in some circumstances personal and private information will not be forwarded on at all, and the victim finds that they have disclosed a large amount of sensitive personal and financial data to unknown persons, as well as paying for something that was available for free.

Jennifer Hampton, senior trading standards officer said: “A number of these web sites were closed down throughout last year, with enforcement action ongoing in many cases. However, it is impossible to effectively police the internet and stop the fraudsters before people hand over their details. “Residents should therefore be very careful about what web site they are on before providing their personal information.” The situation may become more complicated this year, as for the first time, HMRC will be emailing reminders to people who normally file their tax returns online.

People should therefore be sure that the email they have received is genuine. Guidance released from HMRC is that the genuine email will be generic and will not contain any of your personal information. It may state that you have made a payment or that your tax code has changed.

Importantly, a genuine HMRC email will not contain financial information, it will not have links to your account log in pages, it will not have any attachments and the only links from the email will be to HMRC or .gov.uk.

Councillor Vincent Waters, East Renfrewshire environment convener said: “Please follow our trading standards team’s advice and take care when giving out personal information online. Unfortunately there are unscrupulous people out there who use the internet as a means of trying to defraud honest people out of their hard earned cash. If you want to find out more about staying safe on the internet an informative site to visit is www.getsafeonline.org.” If you are concerned about any emails which appear not to be genuine, please pass them to phishing@hrmc.gsi.gov.uk However, as the deadline for submitting your return approaches, don’t panic and provide your details to the first web site on a Google search, ensure you have gone directly to the .gov.uk address.

Most importantly, residents should be wary of any emails saying that you are due a refund after the submission of your return. HMRC will never inform you about a tax rebate or penalty by email or text, so if you receive one of these messages, report it immediately and do not respond.