If you see an e-mail that purports to be from the IRS, you should be careful. There are dozens (or hundreds) of individual scams that trick taxpayers into entering social security numbers and other private data into web sites that are forgeries of the IRS website at irs.gov.

Never click on a link contained in one of these e-mails. Instead, copy the URL and paste it into your web browser.

Never reply directly to one of these e-mails with your information; the IRS does not use e-mail to request sensitive data.

For more details, see the IRS announcement.

This may be a good time to remind our clients to be careful when sending any private information by e-mail. Because messages pass through multiple public servers before arriving at their destination, there is always a possibility that others can intercept it. That is why we encourage clients to use fax and FTP, and why we encrypt any e-mailed PDFs.

Categories: Tax News and Tips
No Comments »