This taxing season there has been an outpouring of agitated customers which used TurboTax’s online software. However, there are con artists who are consistently trying to use more historic means in order to isolate taxpayers from their money, such as pestering them on the phone.

It has been reported by the Internal Revenue Service that there have been many warnings about tax phone frauds. These criminals will call an individual acting as if they are an agent from the I.R.S. The criminals claiming to be the I.R.S. will tell the taxpayer that they must pay taxes back then threaten that legal action will be taken if the individual does not make a payment quickly. Frequently, the individual is pushed to wire money, but more occasionally they will tell the victim to obtain a prepaid money card at any retailer and hand over the number to the caller.

Over the last year the complaints about the I.R.S imposter fraud have increased over the last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

When dealing with these fraudulent IRS calls the con artists can be very aggressive, they are also ruthless and relentless. It was stated by J. Russell George, which is the Treasury inspector general for tax administration that there were complaints of 290,000 calls since October 2013 and there have been approximately 3,000 victims that have been stolen from with a total of more than $14 million.

These callers try to appear as authentic as possible by using robocalling technology that will show on your caller identification screen that the I.R.S is calling you. There is a possibility that they may know either part or all of your Social Security number and present a fraudulent I.R.S. badge number. There are also many cases in which a follow up call may come, allegedly from the local prosecutors or police.

The first thing to look out for when this occurs is to know that the “IRS” does not make phone calls. The IRS will only send written correspondence through the United States mail.