The IRS is doing its level best to warn against tax scams and encouraging taxpayers to be vigilant against phone and email scams that use the IRS as a lure. A recent IRS press release announced a pervasive new phone scam that targets people across the country, including recent immigrants. We wrote a previous post about this scam on October 17th when it appeared these scammers were operating with impunity during the government shutdown.
The following are details of the phone scam taxpayers need to be aware of:
- Callers claim they are from the IRS seeking to collect back taxes and insist taxpayers pay their tax debt using a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer.
- They offer fake IRS badge numbers to sound credible.
- The scammers often know the last four digits of the victim’s social security card.
- Scammers generally threaten those who refuse to pay with arrest, deportation or loss of a business or driver’s license, liens, bank levies and wage garnishment, anything they can to intimidate victims into giving out personal and financial information.
- They also send bogus IRS emails to support their false claim.
- Most of the calls are from a 530 area code, possibly from a call center.
- Most of the callers have heavy accents and use common names like “Kevin Peterson”, “John Miller” or “Chris Brown.”
- If hung up on, the scammers will call a second time claiming to be the police or DMV. They manipulate the caller ID to support their claim.
Here are three important points to remember about the IRS:
- The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information. This includes any type of electronic communication, such as text messages and social media channels.
- The IRS also does not ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts.
- Recipients should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the message. Instead, forward the e-mail to phishing@irs.gov.
If you get a call from someone claiming to be with the IRS asking for a payment, here’s what the IRS wants you to do:
- If you owe IRS taxes, or think you might owe taxes, hang up and call the IRS at 800-829-1040. IRS workers can help you with your payment questions.
- If you don’t owe taxes, call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 800-366-4484.
- You can also file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov. Make sure to add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments in your complaint.
There is more information about tax scams, schemes and ID Theft on the real IRS website: IRS.gov.
