HMRC staff spying on taxpayers and accessing records without permission Yorkshire Live

pHM Revenue and Customs HMRC has revealed that hundreds of staff have accessed the records of taxpayers without permission or breached security in other ways HMRC dismissed 50 members of staff last year for accessing or risking the exposure of taxpayers records according to The Telegraphpp354 tax employees have been disciplined for data security breaches since 2022 of whom 186 have been fired and some were dismissed for accessing confidential information HMRC holds sensitive data including salary and earnings which staff cannot access without a good reasonppThe Telegraph says 96 staff were disciplined last year for data breaches and 50 were dismissed The year before 138 employees were disciplined and 68 were dismissed As well as accessing records data breaches can include changing records without permission losing documents and not properly disposing of equipment that contains sensitive datappOne employee was dismissed after sending the data of 100 people to his personal email address including their salaries and National Insurance numbers He printed the information on his home computer and was dismissed for gross misconductppIn an email to staff the line manager of the claimant wrote There have been more incidents of this recentlyppJohn Hood of accountants Moore Kingston Smith said Any HMRC employee foolish enough to look up personal information that is not part of their usual responsibilities faces a ticking time bomb as most searches are tracked As an additional security some parts of the system are restricted so that only specifically authorised personnel can access them such as the departments dealing with MPs and civil servantsppHMRCs annual report shows there were six incidents last year of employees changing customer records without permission and two of staff losing inadequately protected devicesppA spokesman for HMRC said Instances of improper access are extremely rare and we take firm action when it does happen helping prevent a recurrence We take the security of customers data extremely seriously and we have robust systems to ensure staff only access records when there is a legitimate business needppAt Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising You can opt out of the saleor sharing of your data at any time clicking the quotDo Not Sell or Share my Dataquot button at the bottom of the webpage Please note that your preferences are browser specific Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Privacy Noticep