Taxpayers are being warned to make sure they check carefully before completing online self assessment returns to ensure that they do not inadvertently use one of the commercial sites available by mistake, particularly as the HMRC website has been totally redesigned to fall under the general gov.uk website design now rolled out over all government departments.
The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG) is warning taxpayers who need to file online returns by 31 January to beware of commercial self-assessment tax websites that charge fees for forwarding a tax return to HMRC.
The LITRG says taxpayers should make sure they are using the official and free HMRC service at gov.uk to file their tax return online.
This is not a new problem, as LITRG stressed, pointing that many taxpayers mistook an unofficial site for the official HMRC site ‘because it used similar colours and key words and came at the top of the online searches’ in the 2014 self assessment window.
It adds that often, such unofficial sites ‘are not actually breaking the law unless they are misusing HMRC’s logo’. In fact, the LITRG says it has spotted one such site this year that ‘seems to propose a charge of £500 for a review and submission service’.
The LITRG recommends that taxpayers go directly to the official HMRC website via www.gov.uk and avoid the use of search engines, as these may return different results which confuse official sites with others.
The dedicated HMRC Self Assessment page is available here https://www.gov.uk/personal-tax/self-assessment