In recent years, thousands of people have lost millions of dollars and their personal information to tax scams and fake IRS communication. Scammers use the regular mail, telephone, fax or email to set up their victims. This page looks at the different scams affecting individuals, businesses, and tax professionals and what do if you if you spot a tax scam.
REMEMBER: The IRS doesn't initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text messages or social media channels to request personal or financial information. In addition, IRS does not threaten taxpayers with lawsuits, imprisonment or other enforcement action. Recognizing these telltale signs of a phishing or tax scam could save you from becoming a victim.
Last-Minute Email Scams
The IRS, state tax agencies and the tax industry urges both tax professionals and taxpayers to be on guard against suspicious activity, especially email scams requesting last-minute deposit changes for refunds or account updates.
Recommendations for tax professionals:
Verbally reconfirm any change of address or direct deposit change to a refund with the client.
Consider changing and strengthening their email passwords to better protect email accounts used to exchange sensitive data with clients.
Recommendations for taxpayers:
Learn to recognize phishing emails, calls or texts that pose as banks, credit card companies, tax software providers or even the IRS. They generally urge you to give up sensitive data such as passwords, Social Security numbers and bank or credit card accounts.
If you receive suspicious emails forward them to
[email protected]. Remember: never open an attachment or link from an unknown or suspicious source.
https://www.irs.gov/uac/tax-scams-consumer-alerts