During tax season, scammers work overtime to try to steal your refund.
The Internal Revenue Service has reported that scammers are impersonating the IRS and texting taxpayers asking for personal information.
The IRS will not send tax refunds or try to contact you by email or text.
Scammers may also spoof numbers that appear in your caller ID so it appears that the call is coming from the IRS.
If you receive a call from someone claiming to be with the IRS, ask for a reference number, then hang up and use one of the official IRS numbers to call back and confirm whether or not the call was legitimate.
The IRS has highlighted on its website what some attempts to scam taxpayers may look or sound like. They urge you to watch out for:
- A big payday - If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Bad tax advice on social media may convince you to lie on tax forms or mislead you about credits you can claim.
- Demands or threats - Impersonators want you to “pay now, or else.” They may try to threaten arrest or deportation. They don’t let you question or appeal the amount of tax you owe.
- Website links - Odd or misspelled web links can take you to harmful imposter sites instead of IRS.gov.
Every year, the IRS posts on its website a list of the “Dirty Dozen” scams and schemes that threaten taxpayers. The 2025 Dirty Dozen includes the latest information from the IRS about phishing and online scams, imposter texts used in scam attempts.
Additional tips to remember:
- The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text messages, or social media platforms to request personal or financial information.
- If you are contacted from someone claiming to be from the IRS, do not give out any of your personal information over the phone, including requests for PIN numbers, passwords or similar access information for credit cards, banks or other financial accounts.
- If you know or think you owe taxes, call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to validate the call. If there is a valid issue, the IRS employees at the number will assist you.
- If you do not owe taxes and/or never received a bill in the mail prior to the call, hang up immediately, then call the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to report the incident at 1-800-366-4484.
- The Taxpayer Advocate service is real but will not call taxpayers without reason.
- The Bureau of Tax Enforcement is not a real organization.
Knowing the warning signs of a tax scam, and how to tell if the IRS is legitimately attempting to make contact with you, can help you avoid becoming a victim of fraud.
You can file a complaint with the FCC about fraudulent phone calls or texts at consumercomplaints.fcc.gov.
For more tips on how to avoid becoming a victim of a robocall or text scam, check out the FCC’s consumer guide on illegal calls and texts.