I got a lovely email this morning informing me that I’m due a £238 rebate!

All I have to do is click the link to create a .gov pathway account..
The email started

Dear taxpayer, this is an automatically generated email

Lolz

Other than that it was quite convincingly worded

I’m no mug, but they’re actually getting quite good these days. Some of the PayPal ones are quite convincing.

It’s been doing the rounds for a couple of years now, there’s an article about fake emails on the real website.

Yep, been getting that one on and off for about 5 years.

Only going to get even more realistic as online databases get hacked. Like that ransomware on the other day that can address you personally by name.
Thankfully HMRC use Royal Mail still.

Thankfully HMRC use Royal Mail still.

More to the point – HMRC pay any rebate first and notify you by email a few days later. So if you get a genuine email about rebates from them the money will already be in your account.

More to the point – HMRC pay any rebate first and notify you by email a few days later. So if you get a genuine email about rebates from them the money will already be in your account.

Mine arrives by cheque, normally a few days after the statement.

I got £6.5k back last year 🙂

I got £6.5k back last year

I got a similar sized rebate a few years back – seems like a present and then (being self employed) you remember its because you’ve just had a pretty bad year 😆 Its not a lottery win the HMRC giving you a pity payment!

spookily enough i had a real tax rebate coming, but first they try to pay it into your account and then they send a cheque, well thats what happened in my case.
in windows on a desktop or laptop i always right click a suspect email and click “view source” you can usually check if its genuine, if not tick the box that says “block” and when it asks you if you really want to it will show you who sent it, youll usually know if its genuine or not by the senders email address

please dont rely on this, this is what i do, it may not be the right thing for you to do

I only get one if I pay into a SIPP that year.