The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) identified nearly two million tax returns as potential cases of identity theft during the last fiscal season, according to a recent Treasury Department report.
IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a recent interview that the agency has been addressing the growing number of taxpayer concerns about scams targeting them. The new rip-off is targeting certain types of particular individuals.
The New Scam the IRS Is Warning Taxpayers About
Werfel explained in an interview that the impostors are making phone calls, sending emails and, in some cases, text messages, with an important focus on vulnerable populations such as the elderly.
They threaten them with supposed tax debts that do not actually exist, and convince them to take out their credit cards and give them the data and their financial information.
Once criminals have your credit card details, they use them to spend or buy or to extract as much money as possible.
IRS Offers Advice About How to Protect Yourself From Scams
The commissioner stressed that the best way to avoid being scammed is to understand what the IRS does not do. If someone calls and tells you to pay with a credit card or a prepaid debit card, it’s not the IRS. The agency doesn’t call people out of the blue.
If your officers need to contact the taxpayer, they will send a letter to your home or business. They will not threaten immediate action as if they were going to repossess your home, call the local police or deport you. The IRS doesn’t do that. When you receive your letter, if the IRS needs to contact you, you have plenty of time to respond, and the third thing it doesn’t do is demand payment by a certain method, Werfel explained.
Scammers also use social media to search for victims, offering alleged tricks to get free money from the IRS. So, if you received a $300 refund last year and someone on social media tells you how you can get a $30,000 refund this year, don’t believe them, because this is a viral hoax.
Because if you end up applying to the IRS for such an exorbitant credit, your entire tax return will be delayed. You are subject to possible sanctions.
Increase in Scams to Taxpayers Throughout the United States
Scams are on the rise, and that’s the main concern. More and more cases of this type of fraud are being observed. During the last tax filing season, there was a notable increase in the number of people claiming non-performing credits on their returns.
When interviewing these taxpayers, they were asked about the origin of the information that made them think they were eligible for a $30,000 credit when they only earned $40,000 a year. The repeated response was that they got the information through social media.
So, you know, the IRS is never going to call you by phone, by SMS or by WhatsApp, so you should pay attention only to those communications from the agency that arrive by postal mail, always checking that it is a document with official IRS letterhead, because some scammers can also use that medium.