Parenting Pointers: Tax Scams

Tax time can be high time for people to be duped into falling for tax-related scams. I had a chance to interview Cameron Camp, security researcher with ESET about some current tax scams and how you can protect yourself.


1) What are some of the most prevalent scams this year around tax time?
The rule that “if something is too good to be true, it is” applies here. If your tax preparer claims that you don’t legally need to pay any taxes (when your income determines you do), or that you should set up phony offshore corporations to skirt taxes, or that you should sign off on them getting the IRS refund check and then giving you the remainder “after a small fee”, run the other way. Remember, if you fall for any of these scams, you’ll still have to pay once you get caught, regardless of what bad advice you got.

2) How can people know if an email that looks like it's from the IRS is legit or not?

IRS doesn’t send taxpayer correspondence via e-mail, so if you get an email purporting to be from them, it’s fraudulent. Don’t click on any links in the email, and certainly don’t download or open any attachments, or you and your computer may be in for a surprise that could include malware, scam websites that harvest your personal information, or a host of other nastiness.

3) What are some efforts that the IRS and other tax professionals are making to educate consumers about sorting fact from fiction?

The IRS annually publishes “The Dirty Dozen” list of the most popular scams they’ve seen that year. While the list makes for some amusing reading (can people really fall for that?), the scams continue to exist because they are successful enough to create enough revenue for the scammers to continue. You may not REALLY have a rich Nigerian prince who’d love to send you millions as an inheritance, and you also may not be able to declare yourself a sovereign nation that doesn’t need to pay taxes. Of course, the Nigerian folks have been well-financed for years, which means their scams still net victims.

 4) What is ESET and how does it fit in with security and identity safety?

ESET can put a guard program on your computer that will prevent scams that can capture your keystrokes when you enter your banking website, make a purchase online, check in with friends on Facebook, or check your email. While you can reduce your odds by being careful and vigilant, having a program that just does all that for you and silently keeps up with the latest threats and their deterrents and automatically protects you frees up your time to do what’s important.