(DailyDig.com) – The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued warnings to taxpayers who are due refunds during this tax season to be aware of scammers who try to steal their refunds.
According to Danny Werfel, the IRS commissioner, scammers pose as IRS agents in order to trick taxpayers into providing them with personal and financial information.
Taxpayers contacted the IRS last year, leading to 294,138 cases involving identity theft complaints. It typically takes the IRS 19 months from a complaint to the resolution of the claim, and the taxpayer receives their refund.
The scammers prey on taxpayers in an effort to gather information about their refunds. Scams happen most often during the tax season, when taxpayers are working on their tax filing. The different varieties of scams should be known by all taxpayers, and they should be vigilant for them, according to the director of the AARP Fraud Watch Network, Amy Nofziger.
The public should be aware of the three tactics that scammers use, Petros Efstathopoulos, a security expert, said.
When contacting someone, they use fear as a tactic. They present a problem that the taxpayer must resolve in order to stay out of trouble with the IRS.
Creating an urgent need to hurry so that the taxpayer feels they must do something immediately often causes them to share their information, like their Social Security number. Because of the feeling of speed, they don’t research if they should give up their vital information, Nofziger said.
Money is a motivator for the scammer to obtain the taxpayers’ information, as they may promise a larger refund if they give them money to use their service or provide them with their information.
Phishing emails or texts that scammers send to people use one or more of the three tactics to victimize them.
Phone calls and mail are other ways scammers use to steal a person’s identity in order to forge a false tax filing.
According to the IRS, taxpayers are never contacted except through the US Mail Service.
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