A appalled Lorraine Kelly has given a urgent warning to viewers of her ITV show to be wary of a new HMRC scam which has already claimed numerous victims.
As she does every day of the week, Scottish presenter Lorraine was in her video as the clock hit 9am on Tuesday and, after discussing more light hearted things like the official Eurovision handover to Liverpool and the semi final draw, took things on a more serious path when she was joining by consumer expert Claire Barrett.
First on the agenda was the crippling cost of living crisis, as Claire highlighted just how much supermarket goods had gone up in price over the last year and then Lorraine raised the subject of the HMRC scam, which sees fraudsters target their victims over self assessment tax returns.
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Looking concerned, Lorraine remarked: "Unfortunately a lot of people are falling for this," as Claire replied: "This is something the scammers do. They pick something that is in the news, on our minds already - yesterday for the self assessment tax return deadline. People are getting really realistic sounding phone calls, text messages, emails...featuring the HMRC logo: either nasty ones saying 'you owe your tax, you haven't paid, we're going to fine you,' which will scare them into making a payment to criminals posing as the tax authority.
"Or, in some cases, nicer ones saying you're owed a tax rebate 'give us all your details and we'll pay it back in. So two different approaches they're using against us."
Offering sound advice, Claire added: "The key to avoiding these is HMRC never phone anyone, they like to send letters; they will never ask you to pay and put you under pressure or threaten will your arrest, which is happening on some of these calls.
"And if you're watching this and thinking 'well I know I should have paid my tax bill but I haven't because I can't afford it,' the good news is that you can actually split the payments," telling viewers to go to the HMRC website for further details.
She ended: "Don't listen to the fraudsters and, if you are in trouble, go online."
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