“Is This Really the IRS?” — Scam Shield

The IRS contact rules

• First contact is almost always a letter delivered by U.S. mail.
• The IRS never demands gift cards, prepaid debit cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency.
• The IRS never threatens arrest by phone, text, email, or social-media DM.
• The IRS does not ask for personal or financial information by text or DM.

Verdict: LIKELY SCAM

• Do not pay, do not click, do not share any personal information.
• The IRS's first contact is almost always a letter by U.S. mail. It never demands gift cards, prepaid cards, wire transfers, or crypto, and never threatens arrest by phone, text, email, or DM.
• Verify independently: sign in at irs.gov (type it yourself) or call the number printed on IRS.gov — never a number the caller gave you.
• Report it at phishing@irs.gov and to the FTC.

Every year the IRS publishes its Dirty Dozen — the twelve worst tax scams and schemes it is seeing right now. This is our plain-language summary of the standing categories; the schemes rename themselves every season, but the anatomy barely changes. If you can recognize the anatomy, the name does not matter.

• Phishing & smishing. Fake IRS emails and texts with links to fake login pages that harvest your credentials. The IRS does not initiate contact by email, text, or DM — see the contact checker above.
• Impersonation calls — now with AI voices. Callers posing as IRS agents demanding immediate payment, sometimes with cloned voices and spoofed caller ID. First contact from the real IRS is by U.S. mail.
• Bad tax advice on social media. Viral posts pushing fabricated forms, fake W-2s, and credits you do not qualify for. Filing what a video told you to file makes YOU the signer of a fraudulent return.
• Fictitious credits & credit mills. Promoters selling claims for credits that do not exist or that you clearly do not qualify for — the pattern set by Employee Retention Credit mills, and copied since for a bogus “self-employment tax credit” and inflated fuel-tax-credit claims. When the claim collapses, the taxpayer owes the money back, plus penalties; the promoter is gone.
• Ghost preparers. Paid preparers who refuse to sign your return or include their PTIN, invent income or deductions to inflate the refund, and vanish by summer. An unsigned paid return is the tell — and the liability is yours.
• Fake charities. Bogus nonprofits — often appearing within hours of a disaster — soliciting donations that are neither charitable nor deductible. Verify the organization in the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search before giving.
• Offer in Compromise mills. Companies charging thousands to submit settlements they know the IRS formula will reject, advertising “pennies on the dollar” to people whose own math never qualified. The Offer is a formula, not a negotiation show — see the Resolution Pathfinder.
• Spear-phishing of tax professionals. “New client” emails and fake software-update lures aimed at preparers, designed to steal their client files and file fraudulent returns in bulk. If your preparer is breached, your data is the product.
• Abusive schemes for high-income filers. Syndicated conservation easements, abusive micro-captive insurance, and monetized installment sales — sold as sophistication, unwound by the IRS as listed transactions.
• Fake documents & fabricated income. Made-up W-2s, 1099s, or Schedule C income invented to manufacture a refund or “qualify” for credits. This is not aggressive tax planning; it is fraud with a paper trail.

The IRS publishes a new Dirty Dozen each filing season. We re-verify this summary against the current list every season through the Update Engine — the live list is at irs.gov/newsroom/dirty-dozen-tax-scams ↗.