100,000 UK taxpayer accounts hit in £47m phishing attack on HMRC

HMRC’s deputy chief executive said the breach was ‘not a cyber-attack, we have not been hacked, we have not had data extracted from us’. Photograph: Marina Demidiuk/Alamy

HM Revenue and Customs has lost £47m after a phishing scam breached tens of thousands of tax accounts, a group of MPs has heard.

Two senior civil servants at the tax authority told the Treasury committee on Wednesday that 100,000 people had been contacted, or were in the process of being contacted, after their accounts were locked down in what the officials said was an “organised crime” incident that began last year.