CRA Requests Taxpayer to be Careful of Tax-Themed Scams

Almost every year, thousands of Canadians are falling for this scam emails intending to be from Canadian Revenue AGENCY (CRA), the official Canadian taxing agency, and as tax season gets underway it's no different this year as well, warns the CRA, as published by globalnews.ca on March 26,2013.

"They can be many types," claims Dave Morgan, Communication Manager of the CRA." It could be an e-mail, phishing; it could be telephone or letters, "as told by globalnews.ca on March 26, 2013."

In certain cases, the mailer tells the recipient that they are about to receive an Interac transfer sent by the Revenue Canada and urges banking details. However, according to others, one might be a part of "probable tax evasion fraud" and also to clarify it, one is required to complete and mail a revised tax form filling up all the personal details, he added further.

As per Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, in 2012, the total number of victimzed of this CRA scam totaled to about $10,000. But these numbers don't tell the entire story as only some of the victims in some cases one in 20 report these incidents.

Hence, to better supply taxpayers to recognize those communications that do not come from CRA, the following steps are provided. The CRA is not required to do the following: Firstly, the CRA will not demand details of any type from a taxpayer via e-mail, and, the CRA will not reveal taxpayer details to another person until formal approval is favored by the taxpayer.

Unfortunately, CRA is not the only taxing agency that is deploying alerts about tax-themed scam campaigns, as similar alerts that has been issued by America's Official taxing agency, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as well, as it disclosed its "Dirty Dozen" list of tax scams for 201.

According to IRS Acting Commissioner, Steven T. Miller "The Dirty Dozen list displays the scams that come in many forms during filing season. Thus, a scam artist should not be allowed to con you that may lead you to regret it later," as reportted by examiner.com on March 26, 2013.

Related article: Car SatNav Gives Another Opportunity to Hackers

» SPAMfighter News - 4/8/2013