Fake IRS Email Scam – Underreported Income
Author: Thomas AjavaIf there is one agency everyone responds to, it is the IRS. Scammers know this and have developed a host of campaigns using the name of the agency to sucker taxpayers into releasing information. A new email scam uses the threat of underreported income to get consumers to download a malicious file.
The IRS has been trumpeting its efforts to close the tax gap. Depending on the year, the agency estimates that between $300 and $450 billion dollars in tax revenue goes uncollected. One of the primary reasons is the underreporting of income by taxpayers. The email scam currently circulating uses this issue as its basis.
The scam comes to your email box from a purported IRS email address. The subject line of the email states “unreported/underreported income [Fraud Application]”. The body of the email then states that you’ve underreported income and refers to a unidentified part of your recent tax return which is supposedly attached to the email. You are then supposed to download the attachment to verify it. As you can probably already guess, the download is a malicious file.
The IRS has come a long way when it comes to the digital age. That being said, the agency is very old school when it comes to dealing with taxpayer issues. By this, I mean that the agency never sends notices of action to taxpayers by email. Everything is sent by snail mail with most of the notices automatically being kicked out by a computer. If you ever get an email from the IRS, you can usually assume it is a fake. If you have any doubts as to its legitimacy, you can just pick up the phone and call the IRS to ask if you’ve been sent anything.
The new IRS email scam plays on the fear taxpayers have of the agency. Don’t be a sucker. Ignore it and don’t reward such conduct.
Thomas Ajava writes for PersonalIncomeTaxLawyersCharlotteNorthCarolina.com - locate personal income tax lawyers in Charlotte, North Carolina 24/7.
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