IRS warns of summer surge of tax scams

The Internal Revenue Service is raising awareness about several new scams. One uses misleading mailings with the IRS masthead urging recipients to call a fake phone number. The other involves deceptive emails claiming recipients can get a 2023 tax refund.

“The Internal Revenue Service warned taxpayers today to be on the lookout for a summer surge of tax scams as identity thieves continue pounding out a barrage of email and text messages promising tax refunds or offers to help ‘fix’ tax problems,” the IRS stated.

The IRS is getting hundreds of complaints daily about the latest email scheme, which discusses a third round of economic impact payments.

The subject line says: “Third Round of Economic Impact Payments Status Available.” Additionally, it says, “You will receive a tax refund of $976.00. We will process this amount once you have submitted the document we need…”

The email also claims that you should expedite the process and confirm the required document immediately. However, do not click any link until you verify where it came from. Plus, the third round of economic impact payments were in 2021. There are no stimulus checks being issued in 2023. Most importantly, the IRS does not contact taxpayers via email.

According to the IRS, people that receive these scams by email should send the email to phishing@irs.gov.

“It’s important to remind taxpayers about scams, and they are always emerging,” said Alejandra Castro, IRS spokesperson. “They’re always changing. They come through email, text, and social media. So please, every taxpayer should know that the IRS will never initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text, or social media regarding a bill or a tax refund. And now we have to remind them to also be on the lookout for letters through a delivery service, because that’s also a scam.”

The IRS is calling it the “delivery service” scam. It involves a mailing that arrives in a cardboard envelope from a delivery service. The letters even include the IRS masthead and says the notice is “in relation to your unclaimed refund.”

This scheme is particularly dangerous because the IRS genuinely contacts taxpayers through mail. However, these letters ask for sensitive personal information like detailed pictures of driver’s licenses, bank routing information, and social security numbers. Additionally, the IRS said many of the letters are poorly worded, have odd punctuation, and use a mix of fonts.

“My recommendation, if you get something in the mail, or something that raises a red flag to you, call the IRS,” Castro said. “Don’t call the number on that letter, call 1-800-829-1040, and find out if they sent you a letter. You can also open an account on irs.gov/account, and generally, all the letters that the IRS sends you are there in your record.”

More information about how the IRS contacts taxpayers, and avoiding scams can be found here.