Three of the most commonly occurring tax scams

Countless number of taxpayers have been deprived of their substantial earnings, and their confidential data, due to tax scams. The con artists behind this task utilize a variety of means to trick consumers, companies, and organizations, which include deceitful phone calls, and manipulative mail and e-mails. As stated within the warnings on their website, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) doesn’t commence communication with individuals through e-mail or social platforms to plead for their confidential and economic data. On the contrary, the IRS ensures to warn taxpayers by thoroughly informing them with a variety of articles addressing what tax scams are, how to detect them and beware of them, and if targeted, how to report the incident. According to the IRS, three of the most commonly occurring tax scams consist of IRS-impersonation telephone scams, ghost tax return preparer scam, and phishing scams.

The tax scam that has been concerning the IRS most lately has been the IRS-impersonation telephone scam. It is composed of an intricate phone scam that preys on individuals by asserting to the taxpayer that they are an IRS employee. The thoroughly planned phone scam comprises of the scammer providing forged names and ID numbers, and manipulating taxpayers by stating to them that they are indebted to the IRS. Moreover, the callers demand a payment, tell victims they are obligated to settle their debt with IRS through the offered payment methods, and fully intimidate people through arrest and deportation warnings. The people behind these scams have such a small degree of ethics that they even target those that are deaf, finding them to be easy cases. Taxpayers can prevent being victims of IRS-impersonation telephone scams by knowing IRS doesn’t contact individuals to demand immediate payment, send warnings of law-enforcement, or ask for payment information.

Ghost tax preparers are another form of tax scammers that are present in the current society. According to the IRS, a ghost preparer is a scammer who is compensated to put together a taxpayer’s tax return, but who purposefully fails to sign the tax return as the paid preparer. This is an alarming event because fraudulent and disreputable tax preparers aim to earn quick profits from principled taxpayers, intermittently basing the prices of their services on a percentage of the refund. Ghost tax preparers can also victimize a taxpayer by entering their own bank information for the tax refund rather than the taxpayer’s information. Taxpayers can avoid being victims of ghost tax preparers by checking for any abnormalities or errors within their tax returns prior to filing with the IRS or paying for any services.

Phishing tax scams accomplished through malware schemes is a scam where con artists dispatch emails to deceive unaware taxpayers into disclosing confidential data that could be utilized to purloin the taxpayer’s governmental identity. According to the IRS, in wake of the phishing tax scams, they have announced warnings regarding the illicit usage of IRS’s name by con artists attempting to retrieve taxpayer’s confidential information. Taxpayers can prevent being targeted by phishing scammers by being aware of how IRS doesn’t rely on social media, e-mail and text messages to contact taxpayers.

For instance, Rashia Wilson is an infamous tax scammer that relentlessly targets innocent taxpayers in manipulative tax schemes. Robert W. Wood, in his article Queen of Tax Fraud Gets 21 Year Prison Term – For the Second Time states that Wilson has stolen over three million through tax fraud in identify theft and wire fraud. However, Wilson was caught after a thorough investigation which resulted in her being sentenced to 21 years in prison. The consequences of Wilson’s actions demonstrate how serious tax scams are taken by the government, and despite all the regulations against such scams, they happen at an agitating rate.

IRS finds it challenging to tackle the conflicts thrown at them due to tax scammers. The most influential way to address the issue as a society is to enforce regulations with better methods and for taxpayers to be aware of how the IRS operates and their own tax returns.