IRS Issues Warning About Phishing

The IRS has issued an alert about an emerging phishing scheme. The alert concerns fraudulent emails that are being sent with fake IRS tax bills related to the Affordable Care Act. The emails, which have reportedly surfaced across the country, request additional information and payment requests due to underreported income.

Please note: the IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information. This includes requests for PIN numbers, passwords or similar access information for credit cards, banks or other financial accounts.

The attached forms requesting information are called CP2000 notices, which are sent when income reported by an employer does not match individual tax return reports. In this case, the fraudulent CP2000 notices are for tax year 2015.

The CP2000 is a notice that is mailed to taxpayers through the U.S. Postal Service and never as an attachment in an email. The IRS is warning taxpayers not to click or open the attachments. According to the IRS, the fraudulent CP2000 notices appear to be issued from an Austin, Texas address.

This latest phishing scam comes in light of several recent attempts to access financial and personal identifiable information (PII) through IRS-related scams. “This just shows how tenacious these crooks are,” said Luis Garcia, a spokesman for the IRS in Detroit. “They keep adapting and morphing to find new ways to trick you out of your money.” Not only are the cybercriminals seeking confidential PII, they are also demanding that taxpayers send a check made out to “IRS,” which one should never do.

The IRS is asking taxpayers to forward any “phishy” emails to [email protected] and immediately delete the email. IRS impersonation scams take many forms: threatening telephone calls, phishing emails and demanding letters. Learn more at Report Phishing and Online Scams.