HM Revenue & Customs is in a bit of bother after it sent the private financial details of 50,000 tax credit claimants to the wrong addresses.
Included in the mailings were their annual tax credit award notices, together with earnings details, the sort code of their bank account and the last four digits of their bank account number.
Here’s HMRC’s explanation of the problem:
“Unfortunately an error has occurred in one of the tax credits print runs, causing some customer information to be wrongly formatted,”
“Investigations are under way to identify the cause of the problem and we will be contacting affected customers in writing this week, apologising and providing a corrected award notice.
“An initial analysis shows that ID theft could not result from this printing error.”
So that’s ok then.
Of course, it’s probably nothing more simple than a printing problem, but there probably should be some sort of check done that the right letter is addressed to the right person before any of the mailings get sent. And that will do little to calm the nerves of those who’ve had their details mistakenly sent to somebody down their street.
photo credit: loop_oh