Imagine you receive a call from an IRS agent who says you owe back taxes and threatens to arrest you if you don’t immediately make a payment over the phone. Scam season is here.
Thousands of Americans faced this situation in 2016, though the people on the other end of their phone lines weren’t actually from the IRS. They were scam artists calling across the world from Mumbai, India. Their aggressive intimidation of U.S. taxpayers brought in $150,000 a day until police cracked down on their call center.
Amazingly, con artists impersonating IRS agents were involved in a quarter of all the consumer fraud incidents reported to the Better Business Bureau last year, making it by far the most common financial scam. With the new tax-filing season underway, now is the time to be especially vigilant.
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The threatening approach used in Mumbai is just one variety of IRS scam. Another involved sending emails from fake IRS addresses telling taxpayers that due to a mistake they were owed larger refunds. According to the email, all they had to do was provide their bank information and prepay the tax due on the larger refund. Once they made the prepayment, both the scammer and their supposed refund disappeared.
See through any IRS scam
By following a few guidelines you can see through any IRS scam:
- Digital communication is a big no. The IRS will never initiate contact with you via email, text message or social media, nor will they request personal or financial information over those channels. If you do get an email communication purporting to be from the IRS don’t click on any links or open any attachments. Instead, forward the email to phishing@irs.gov.
- Mail first. The first contact from the real IRS will be through the mail. If you get a letter from the IRS that is unexpected or suspicious, it should have a form or notice number searchable on the IRS website, www.irs.gov. Compare what you find there with what you received. If it doesn’t look right, you can call the IRS help desk at 1-800-829-1040 to question it.
- Never pay by phone. A legitimate IRS agent will never make a call to demand immediate payment of a bill or ask you to provide your debit or credit card information over the phone. If you are suspicious, ask for the employee’s name, badge number and phone number. A real IRS agent won’t hesitate to provide this information. You can then politely end the call and dial the IRS at 1-800-366-4484 to confirm the person’s identity.
