It turns out that scammers aren’t just targeting taxpayers: tax professionals are on their radars, too.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has warned tax professionals to use caution after reports of bogus emails started making the rounds. In the latest scheme, tax professionals are sent a bogus email with instructions to update their IRS e-services portal information and Electronic Filing Identification Numbers (EFINs) by clicking links. In actuality, the links appear to be part of a phishing scheme designed to capture your username and password.
To be clear, the IRS is not sending out this email: it is not generated by the IRS e-services program. The IRS encourages tax professionals who receive the bogus email to ignore it: do not click on the links. If you want to report the email, you can do so by sending it to phishing@irs.gov.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen reminded taxpayers to “be wary of clicking on strange emails and websites” this season. And yes, that includes tax professionals, too.
For more information about phishing, check out this IRS video:
