Fraudsters use self assessment to try and steal money or personal information from unsuspecting individuals. In the last year alone, HMRC has responded to 797,010 referrals of suspicious contact from the public and some 357,567 of these offered bogus tax rebates.

In the last 12 months, HMRC has also worked with the telecoms industry and Ofcom to remove more than 1,282 phone numbers being used to commit HMRC-related phone scams.

The scale of the problem is vast with 8,561 malicious web pages reported for takedown.

The self assessment deadline is 31 January 2022 and taxpayers may expect to hear from HMRC at this time of year.