Company Forged Signatures to claim marriage tax

[muffin21]

Hello,

My DH started a marriage tax allowance claim through an advert on facebook, he filled in all his details and then asked me to fill mine in, I barely filled any of my details in before realising it wasn't a gov website. Upon googling the company we just came off the website without completing my details or submitting the form. We didn't get any communications from this company so thought that was it and I made an application through the government website in December. My DH then received an e-mail from this company asking for us to prove our identity but we ignored it thinking they were just trying their luck as we hadn't completed the form or clicked submit.

I rang HMRC today to see how far the application progress was and if we were expecting a rebate for the previous tax year to be told that a company has already claimed the check for that tax year! HMRC have said they have a letter with mine and my husbands signatures on to give this company permission to claim the refund on our behalf. We absolutely have not signed anything at all, HMRC are posting us a copy of this letter so we can see the signatures. Is there anything I can do before we receive the copy of the signatures to help with our case?

We have tried contacting the company that has claimed the refund however none of the phone numbers work that I could find so we have e-mailed them. I have an address for them so I could always send a letter to them too.

It's important for you to understand that HMRC have been victims of this fraud. Not you. So you can still make your claim and HMRC should try and recover from the fraudsters.

Thanks, HMRC didn't seem surprised when we explained the situation, so do you think it's just a case of waiting for the copy of the letter arriving from HMRC to then ring back to ask what they're doing next?

The company have responded to the cross e-mail we sent last night stating that we have signed a letter to give them permission and also attached a copy of the letter, the signatures in no way resemble our actual signatures. We've then responded saying that they absolutely are not our signatures and we never submitted anything to them to give permission to claim on our behalf. They've said that they are our signatures because they aren't a fraudulent company therefore someone else must of submitted the form and signatures in our names.