HMRC has revealed that it has saved the public over £2.4 million by tackling fraudsters that trick the public into using premium rate phone numbers for services that HMRC provide for free.

Scammers create websites that look similar to HMRC’s official site and then direct the public to call numbers with extortionate costs in comparison to the low cost and no cost service HMRC provides.

These sites promote non-HMRC premium rate phone numbers as a means of reaching HMRC but these are merely call forwarding services which connect callers to HMRC at a significant price. HMRC’s own 0300 numbers are mostly free o...