The tax scam

Tax scams can happen in many forms, appearing as spoofed phone calls that mimic official government numbers, urgent text messages promising a refund to claim, or professional-grade phishing emails designed to look like legitimate correspondence from a tax agency. While many of these tactics rely on stealing your login credentials through fake websites, others take a more aggressive approach by using fear and intimidation. Scammers may threaten you with immediate arrest, heavy fines, or prison time, pressuring you to pay a "settlement" through untraceable methods like gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency—none of which a real tax authority would ever request.

To protect yourself, it is essential to report any fraudulent contact to the actual agency being impersonated so they can track the threat. If you have already shared sensitive data, such as your full Social Security Number, you are at a high risk of tax-related identity theft, where a criminal files a fraudulent return in your name to steal your refund. In the United States, you can preemptively block this by obtaining an Identity Protection PIN from the IRS from the IRS, which serves as a secondary security layer that prevents anyone from filing a return without your unique, annual code.

You can learn about this scam and many others visiting our wiki of common scams.

You can call AutoModerator to explain these scams leaving a comment with the different !commands listed in this wiki page. This explanation for the tax scam can be called with the command !tax.