AVJ

So,,, I'm pleased to say the experience of contacting HMRC by phone was far easier than I expected - just 30mins on the line in total and the guy was very helpful. A referral has been raised with an internal team who looks into these cases and I got the impression that this *is* a recognised (frequent?) issue. What I can't understand (and neither could the call handler) is, if this is a fraud attempt, how the unknown 'employer' who has attached themselves to my tax account gets any money from the process. I have been overcharged in tax and will need to get that back but surely that's money which has landed with HMRC not the rogue employer. My tax code has been amended to reverse the error and I've been told to check back in 2-4 wks to see if there is any update. I'll keep this forum posted in case it's of use to anyone. Right now my advice would be "don't ignore tax code changes". Log into the Gov Gateway and check out the reason for the change, no matter how small.

This thread is very interesting. I received an update about a tax code change a couple of months ago but have only now got around to checking it out. It seems I too have a mysterious “new employer” that I’ve never heard of. This one is called “AFV Painters Ltd” which, according to the Companies House website, is registered to a Romanian national at an address in Northampton. I look forward to spending hours in an HMRC call centre queue tomorrow :-|