At IRS tax filing time in the United States, you need to be very cautious. Scammers are very present everywhere and any US taxpayer should be able to prepare his return without fear of being scammed at any time.
Thanks to a number of tips, it is possible to avoid IRS tax scams to a greater extent. Of course, we must be very cautious when it comes to filing returns, as no one wants to get in trouble with their own money.
Scammers aim to get as much information as possible that we can give to the IRS. So any sensitive information about our finances and our household should be treated with great care. Tax season can be very dangerous for all taxpayers if we don’t keep certain things in mind.
How can scammers get our IRS data?
Scammers impersonate the IRS in order to get their hands on as much of our data as possible. In this way, they use many methods to harass us in every way. They will call us on the phone, demand strange payments, receive fraudulent text messages or emails of dubious origin.
IRS worker Luis Garcia has reported via Abc11. He said that “They use every possible avenue to approach you and appear to be a legitimate IRS contact. Sometimes they put up websites that are an exact replica of the IRS website.” In addition to that, the worker has also claimed that the agency itself does not use social media or anything similar to communicate with taxpayers.
Another common scam is for scammers to impersonate the IRS demanding payment immediately. Regarding this, Luis Garcia has admitted that “If the IRS comes knocking on your door and says, ‘Hey, you owe money. You have absolutely every right in the world to say why, show me where, show me how, and we have to take the time, which is your right, and our duty to let you know, this is what you owe, and why you owe it and these scammers don’t do that.”
How to avoid problems with scammers at tax season?
In order to avoid all kinds of scams, we must take into account the following:
- Do not give our private information to strangers.
- If we hire someone to do our return, we must make sure they are a worker connected to the IRS.
- Never sign a blank tax return.
- Never make payments through gift cards to supposed IRS workers.
If we keep all this in mind, we will mostly avoid any kind of problem with scammers. This is since their way of acting is almost always the same.
Remember that the tax season has already started and will be active for 3 months, so get ready and file your return before the time runs out.