Tax Scam Alert - Fraudulent ATO emails!

The ATO recently made an announcement that there are a number of tax refund scam emails circulating.

One of my clients received a scam email last year, so beware, it could happen to you or someone you know. Feel free to share this blog post with your family or friends - it could save them a lot of hassle and money if they fell victim to a tax refund email scam.

The scam email my client received to his business email account was fairly sophisticated. I realised it was a scam when I saw that the email was sent from the email address @ato.com [the ATO email address is ato.gov.au]. This was the first alarm bell! I also knew that the client wasn't getting a tax refund and there was no way the ATO paid refunds by entering in his credit card details.

The ATO also highights these important indicators in recognising a fraudulent tax scam email:

• the email asks you to provide personal details - be very suspicious and don't respond to anything by email
• it can sometimes be poorly worded with spelling and grammatical errors (however, the scam email below looks quite professional)

If you get an email that looks suspicious, do not download anything either! If in doubt, call the ATO on 13 28 61 to clarify any issues brought up in a suspicious email.

Remember if the email sounds too good to be true, it's probably a scam. (Unless you recieve a text message saying you have won $1 billion dollars - they're generally legit... haha JOKING!)

Example of a Fraudulent email:

From: "Australian Taxation Office" <refunds@ato.com>
Date: 9 March 2012 12:30:45 ACDT
Subject: Important Notification
Reply-To: noreply@ato.com

Australian Taxation Office 09/03/2012 TAX REFUND NOTIFICATION Dear Taxpayer, After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 254.33 AUD Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it. To access your tax refund, please follow the steps below: .....- download the Tax Refund Form attached to this email .....- open it in a browser .....- follow the instructions on your screen A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline. Regards, Australian Government

Examples of Tax Scams - this link is from the ATO and has a number of tax scam email examples.


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