IRS Tax Scams to Watch Out for in 2017 – Part 1

IRS Tax scams have unfortunately become very common over the years. IRS scammers have been working extra hard in 2017 as well. We cast a look at some of the worst IRS scams or IRS Tax Scams that you should be wary of.

Generic IRS phone scam

In IRS phone scams, you will be sent a surprise tax bill by the scammer, purportedly by the IRS, which you have to pay immediately or you will be arrested. The scammers make use of telephonic spoofing or phishing so that their number comes up on the phone as from IRS.

They will also have access to the last 4 digits of your Social Security number, which they use to show themselves off as being legitimate. They send fraudulent IRS e-mails to support their claims and fake IRS badge numbers.

You will be asked to make the payment by wire or debit card to a particular account, which they say belongs to the IRS. Be aware, IRS never contacts you by phone asking for money. They only contact you by snail mail.

 Supposed Refund Scam

One of the greatest feelings anyone can have is to get a notice from the IRS that they would be soon getting a tax refund. That’s enough to thrill anyone. You would love to have a secret tax refund waiting for you somewhere.

An accountant Craig Smalley explains in NerdWallet about how this supposed refund scam works. He says that his client received an email that looked like it came from the IRS – informing them that they had received a $7,000 refund.

“All my client needed to do was enter his Social Security number and bank account information, and the IRS would directly deposit the supposed refund into his account. Yeah, right. In this case, I could tell this was a scam because the website didn’t have an irs.gov address.” Craig explains.

Fake Hostage Scam

This is another new type of scam which came to light in 2015 in Washington. A middle aged woman was trying to buy more than $2,400 in prepaid credit cards. When the Clerk asked why she was buying so much in prepaid cards, she said that she had received a call from someone in the IRS warning her about an unpaid tax bill.

What made it worse was that the man – who claimed to be from the IRS – said that he was holding her daughter hostage and would kill her in case she did not pay up.

This is a fraud on so many levels. IRS employees are not a bunch of gangsters like that. They don’t threaten you or ask for ransom. Fortunately, in this case the store clerk alerted the police, who found out that the woman’s daughter was safe. But sadly the scammer still got away.

We discuss more IRS tax scams in the Part 2 of this series. Meanwhile do sign up for our cloud-hosted tax preparation services such as Quicken Hosting, QuickBooks Enterprise Hosting, ProSerie Hosting, QuickBooks Hosting, Drake Tax Hosting or Lacerte Hosting.