As we go through another tax season, it’s important for tax pros to prepare clients for an uptick in fraudulent calls and scammers trying to steal personal information. It’s no surprise that we’re seeing an influx of IRS scams. Scammers often capitalize on major holidays, times of crisis, and increases in travel to exploit their victims. There has been an annual spike in illicit voice, and now text, communications during tax season in the U.S. going back almost a decade. In 2020, nearly 60 million—one in five—Americans were defrauded of $60 billion to robocalling schemes.
This type of behavior is motivated by classic consumer psychology and scams going back decades. As highly competent social engineers, fraudsters exploit people’s anxiety about the IRS to run variations of schemes. The ubiquity of mobile devices as an electronic appendage for nearly 300 million Americans makes robocalling and robotexting the most common channel for defrauding the vulnerable.
As we see an abatement of cases from the Covid-19 pandemic, where there was a material rise in fear-based schemes, the American public likely will see an increased flexibility in filing. Stimulus, deduction changes, and periods of unemployment have set the precedent for the repeated expectation of backlogs.
Given perceptions around these challenges, we expect some consumers to be even more on edge this season than usual. This will precipitate a target-rich environment for those preying on anxious taxpayers….
