This past week, we concluded the final installment of our Tax-Season Scams Series, highlighting a drastic increase in reports to the Internal Revenue Service about suspicious activity—a 300 percent increase from 2021 to 2022. We created this series to help protect Florida taxpayers from this alarming increase in suspicious activity.
Throughout the past several weeks, we highlighted some of the most common tax-related scams, like:
- Fraudulent Tax Preparers: These imposter tax preparers, often advertising the cheapest rates or promise the greatest refunds, but their real goal is to obtain a victim’s personal and financial information;
- Tax Identity Theft: When a bad actor uses, or attempts to use, personal information of another individual to steal a tax return;
- Refund Recalculation Scheme: Phishing messages sent to targets that look like a tax-refund payment or a recalculation of a tax refund. These messages contain a link asking targets to input personal information in order to claim a fake refund; and
- IRS Imposter Scams: When a scammer pretends to be the IRS by spoofing caller ID, emails or text messages to trick targets into believing the IRS is legitimately attempting to make contact—all in an attempt to steal personal information.
For more information about all of these schemes, including tips about how to avoid tax-related scams, visit MyFloridaLegal.com/ConsumerAlert.
Ashley Moody is the attorney general of Florida.