I received this from the IRS today. There's some scams going on - Please don't fall for them. Some of my clients have received some of these e-mails and have called about them. THEY ARE SCAMS. The IRS will notifiy you by MAIL if there is a problem - not by phone, fax or e-mail.


How to Spot a Scam

Many e-mail scams are fairly sophisticated and hard to detect. However, there are signs to watch for, such as an e-mail that:

Requests detailed or an unusual amount of personal and/or financial information, such as name, SSN, bank or credit card account numbers or security-related information, such as mother’s maiden name, either in the e-mail itself or on another site to which a link in the e-mail sends the recipient.
Dangles bait to get the recipient to respond to the e-mail, such as mentioning a tax refund or offering to pay the recipient to participate in an IRS survey.
Threatens a consequence for not responding to the e-mail, such as additional taxes or blocking access to the recipient’s funds.
Gets the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agency names wrong.
Uses incorrect grammar or odd phrasing (many of the e-mail scams originate overseas and are written by non-native English speakers).
Uses a really long address in any link contained in the e-mail message or one that does not start with the actual IRS Web site address (Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or ). To see the actual link address, or url, move the mouse over the link included in the text of the e-mail.
What to Do

The IRS does not initiate taxpayer contact via unsolicited e-mail or ask for personal identifying or financial information via e-mail. If you receive a suspicious e-mail claiming to come from the IRS, take the following steps:

Do not open any attachments to the e-mail, in case they contain malicious code that will infect your computer.
Do not click on any links, for the same reason. Also, be aware that the links often connect to a phony IRS Web site that appears authentic and then prompts the victim for personal identifiers, bank or credit card account numbers or PINs. The phony Web sites appear legitimate because the appearance and much of the content are directly copied from an actual page on the IRS Web site and then modified by the scammers for their own purposes.
Contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to determine whether the IRS is trying to contact you.
Forward the suspicious e-mail or url address to the IRS mailbox phishing@irs.gov, then delete the e-mail from your inbox.
Genuine IRS Web site

The only genuine IRS Web site is IRS.gov. All IRS.gov Web page addresses begin with Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or . Anyone wishing to access the IRS Web site should initiate contact by typing the IRS.gov address into their Internet address window, rather than clicking on a link in an e-mail.