The IRS is warning of a phone scam in new public service announcements intended to spread awareness of the issue.
In the PSA, a woman says, “The IRS is calling me? Is this for real?” and the announcer responds, “Fraud is real.”
From WSAV:
The IRS says well over $25 million has been scammed from innocent taxpayers. The PSAs (there are five and some are in Spanish as well as English) are an effort to let people know this is likely not the IRS calling and it’s okay to follow your instincts and hang up on the caller.
U.S. Treasury Deputy Tim Camus told NBC News “It makes me angry because I feel first of all bad for the victims and then I feel angry that these criminals are using the IRS as a means to scare people into paying them money.”
A few years back the scammers targeted immigrants and threatened deportation. Now the crooks have moved to everybody else. “Early in the scam the callers had some sort of information about you, they may have four digits of your Social Security number, now they’re just randomly making blanket calls. And they’ve also shifted now to also calling cell phones. So that’s even a new development in the scam,” says Camus.
The IRS says if you honestly do owe back taxes, the first step is usually a letter telling you that you owe and must pay. After that, taxpayers often contact the IRS themselves to set up a payment plan.
Phone scammers often bully people into paying phony back taxes by threatening them with jail time if they don’t pay immediately. The IRS advises that if this happens to you, simply hang up the phone.
Photo by 401(K) 2012 via Flickr CC License.
