It may be hard to believe now, but the worldwide web did not exist 25 years ago, especially now that the internet is integral to the way we run our finances and businesses.
Over the past 5 years, H M Revenue & Customs and Companies House have, to their credit created an online infrastructure so we as taxpayers and business owners can submit our financial information to them electronically. This certainly can save time and resources, but it’s not without its pitfalls.
The UK Government have recently started an ad campaign urging us all to be more “Cyber Streetwise”. The campaign is designed to help us protect our personal and business information from various third parties who wish to exploit. If you have not already reviewed the information from this campaign please review the enclosed website for some excellent tips:-
https://www.cyberstreetwise.com/
As proactive accountants we pride ourselves on both providing important and relevant information to our clients, but also to listening to their concerns. Recently we have seen an increase in clients informing us that H.M Revenue and Customs and Companies House have made contact via email. In most cases the emails certainly look official and genuine.
But in almost all cases this is simply not true. The vast majority are in fact “Phishing” emails where the dubious sender is hoping to retrieve personal information to exploit the recipient. We would therefore strongly suggest that any of these types of emails are deleted straight away. H.M Revenue & Customs and Companies House primarily will write to you in letter format and in the case of HMRC, will also always write to us as your agent.
Both Companies House and H.M Revenue and Customs do provide helpful information to check to see if correspondence is genuine.
For further information about from HMRC about Phishing emails and related issues please visit the security section of their official website:-
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/security/advice.htm
For Companies House security information please visit the official Companies House Website section:-
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/securityAdvice/index.shtml
We would also like to state that any of our team will be happy to provide advice if you are unsure about the validity of any correspondence received from Companies House and HMRC. Therefore please do not hesitate to ask, we will be happy to help.
