Tax scams and more tax scams
It’s hard enough to get your taxes paid without having to worry about tax scams. After all, the tax code is incredibly complex. And there are all sorts of reasons why you may be in financial difficulty, making it hard to come up with the money.
But fear of being victimized by tax scams adds another level of anxiety.
In this post, we will inform you about yet another scan to avoid. This one concerns a phrasing scam aimed at tax professionals.
Phishing is an online trick aimed at extracting personal information in order to commit identity theft or other types of fraud. Scammers often try this on taxpayers, sending emails that purport to be from the IRS. We wrote about this in our January 21 post.
Even tax professionals are at risk from sophisticated phishing scams. That is why the IRS has issued a warning to tax preparers to be on alert against a new scam that is a variation on many that have gone before.
The new scam involves a bogus email that asks tax professionals to update their information with the IRS. The email has a link to a website that appears to be registration page for IRS e-services.
The update is needed, the email asserts, because certain information was (supposedly) stolen last year by surreptitious state-sponsored action.
This assertion shows how devious and pervasive scams have become. With tax scams so common, the new scam uses that very fact to try another scam – one that promises better protection against scams.
