How can HM Revenue & Customs keep me waiting on the self-assessment helpline number for 15 minutes (before I give up), then charge me £45 for the call because it’s a premium rate line! The reader reporting this to me was “incandescent” that HMRC could stoop so low, and suggested I investigate. But while it’s true she was on the line to HMRC, and she was indeed charged £45, it wasn’t HMRC benefiting, but one of the low-life bottom feeders who create websites promoting premium rate lines that trick people into paying extortionate sums for public services.
When I contacted HMRC, they were as hopping mad as she was. If you are having trouble filling in your self-assessment form this weekend, HMRC’s tax helpline number is 0300 200 3310. HMRC does not, and never has, operated premium rate lines. What our reader had done was type “tax helpline number” into Google. At the top of the page, up came “Tax office contact number” which, when you click on it, bluntly says that the HMRC self-assessment number is one beginning with 0905. But call this number and you’ll be charged £1.53 a minute from a landline, or double that from a mobile (which unfortunately our reader used). It is not HMRC, but operated by Number-Help-Contact.co.uk, run by Play Brick Telecom.
It’s not the only site trying to trick the unwary. Tap “HMRC helpline number” into Google, and numbersconnect.co.uk comes top. The real HMRC number comes third. Sure enough, numbersconnect tells you the “HMRC income tax office number” is one beginning 0913 – another £1.53-a-minute line.
Regular readers will be familiar with this sting. Three years ago this column highlighted an especially sick scam where people seeking the number for NHS Direct on Google were directed to a premium rate number. PhonepayPlus, the government regulator, later fined the company and removed the “service”.
But at the heart of this problem, and very similar tricks involving “copycat” websites which con you into paying over the odds for government services such as passports, Ehic cards and driving licences, is the hyper-profitable Google “AdWords” system. Companies buy key words such as “NHS” or “Ehic”, and use that to propel themselves into the top spot on the search page.
After the furore over Tax Return Gateway last year – which fooled hundreds of people into paying extra to fill in their tax return – Google promised to do more to stop the abuses. It now has a policy that websites should not misrepresent services or make “untrustworthy promotions”.
The good news is that after I raised concerns, a search for “tax helpline number” or “HMRC helpline number” no longer brings up results from either numbersconnect or Number-Help-Contact. Trouble is, a new one appeared almost instantly, run by phonecall-contact.co.uk – which turns out to be our friends at Play Brick Telecom again. The only director of the company, registered at a mailbox address in London, is a Nicola Clare Mowbray, 42, although my research suggests she is in the Midlands; she has steadfastly failed to reply to my calls and emails.
What’s extraordinary is that Google, after accepting that it could no longer sell words such as “NHS” or “Passport renewal”, told me it still allows private companies to buy “HMRC”, so this trickery is likely to continue. Google already has a reputation for doing everything possible to avoid its fair share of taxes in Britain (revenue 2013 $5.6bn, tax paid £21.6m), yet ironically it is happy to make a few quid more by selling “HMRC”. Have they no shame?
• Talking of billionaires, over to Virgin Group. Our Consumer Champions column this week highlights how Virgin Experience Days sold vouchers for Mother’s Day that expired after six months. Notes and coins don’t expire – so why should vouchers?
