Tax Scams: 2013 Dirty Dozen

Tax Scams: 2013 Dirty Dozen -

You may be dreading the tax season, but there are some people who could not be happier: criminal cartels. They hope to intercept your tax refund to con you to pay fines false or steal your identity. They have an arsenal of increasingly sophisticated tricks: fake emails, texts, websites and telephone scripts. It is a great business because, unfortunately, there is no shortage of victims. Read fiscal 2013 Dirty Dozen Scams, IRS issued a list of the most common tax scams last year.

What are the warning signs of common fraud?

• Threats and promises . All messages via email, text or phone which include frightening threats that require immediate action or promise refunds, rebates or gains should be immediate red flags.

• The requests for personal information . The IRS does not send any communication requesting your PIN numbers, passwords or similar access information for credit cards, banks or other financial accounts. Do not give this information to either phone callers.

• Email with links and attachments . Scammers are good to create email that appears "official." Do not open links or attachments from people you do not know. Make a habit of hovering over messaging links to reveal the real address before clicking because the apparent link can not lead where it says.See How to know if a link is safe without clicking.

Be skeptical of emails. Look for misspellings and bad grammar. One trick you can use is to copy a paragraph from a suspicious email into the Google search box - it often reveals that many people have the same email and point to a number of alerts that mail is fraud. You can also see alerts of consumer IRS.

This is more about how to recognize phishing emails, and here's how phishing report problems to the IRS.

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