Scamsters are on the lookout of leveraging the unrest caused because of COVID-19 to fraud you of your tax payments and refunds. History has time and again witnessed criminals seizing the opportunity to fraud unsuspecting taxpayers, especially when individuals are vulnerable or in a state of need. The MyTaxFiler team urges you to beware of calls and phishing emails about COVID-19; they can lead to tax-related fraud and identity theft. 

All taxpayers ought to be extra careful during this period. While you are dearly awaiting your Economic Impact payments, the scamsters are planning hard to dupe you of that money through any means possible. The IRS is taking all the measures it can to track these fraudsters before they get to you, but you need to be vigilant meanwhile. You need to know a few quick facts which will help you distinguish between the IRS or a tax scams. Here are a few things that you should be aware of to avoid getting into a tax-related fraud. 

1. The IRS never calls to verify or provide your financial information for economic impact payment or a faster refund.
2. Beware of surprise emails from the IRS. Ensure not to open or even click on such emails and refer to the IRS website for the latest news and updates. 
3. Watch out against text messages, phony websites, and social media attempts that may request money for tax payment or your personal information. 

All about Economic Impact Payments

To save yourself from a tax-related scam, you should be aware of how the IRS gives you your economic impact payments. 

1. The IRS deposits the payment into your Direct Deposit Account, which you may have provided earlier. 
2. If you have not given your Direct Deposit Account details earlier, then you can provide your banking information online to the newly designed secure IRS portal, which will be available on the IRS website in the mid of April 2020. 
3. If you do not fulfill any of the points mentioned above, then the IRS will mail you a check to your registered address. 

A piece of advice for the retirees

For all the retirees out there, who usually do not have to file a tax return – you are not required to do anything to receive the $1,200 economic impact payment. If you are also a recipient of Forms SSA-1099 and RRB-1099, you should know that the IRS will not touch base with you over call, email, or mail for asking any information to process the economic impact payment. The IRS will be sending you the $1,200 automatically without any need for additional information. You should be extra careful during this period and beware of people who might use this agenda to extract your personal information. 

A list of things that the scammers might do

1. Use terms like “Stimulus Check” or “Stimulus Payment.” The official term is economic impact payment, and the IRS uses the official term only. 
2. Ask you to sign over your economic impact payment check to them. 
3. Ask for your personal information over call, email, mail, or social media to fasten the procedure of receiving your economic impact payment. 
4. Scamsters may suggest helping you accelerate the process of receiving the economic impact payment by working on your behalf. 
5. Mail you a bogus check and then ask you to verify personal information online to encash it. 

Key takeaways

Fraudsters always try to misuse gaps in awareness to fool taxpayers of their tax money. In case you feel you have been touched based on such an attempt, then report it to [email protected]. You shall be extra careful and keep on reading about the IRS protocols so that you can identify when something seems off and report it to the concerned authority. For further guidance related to the economic impact payment or related scams, you can contact the MyTaxFiler team and explore more.