The Australian Taxation Office is warning the public to be on their guard for scammers at a time when they are putting their tax returns together.
Assistant commissioner Graham Whyte is asking taxpayers to be vigilant and to protect their personal information after almost 87,000 phone and email scams were reported to the ATO in 2015, a 90 per cent increase on 2014.
From January to May this year the ATO has received more than 40,500 phone scam reports that include 226 Australians handing over $1.2 million to fraudsters and more than 1900 giving out some form of personal information, including tax file numbers.
"Most Australians are pretty good at catching fraudsters in the act," Mr Whyte says.
That was clear from the amount of scams reported to the ATO compared to the number of people handing over money and personal information.
Although the ATO made thousands of outbound calls to taxpayers a week, Mr Whyte said there were key differences between a legitimate call and a call from a potential scammer.
"We would never cold call you about a debt; we would never threaten jail or arrest, and our staff certainly wouldn't behave in an aggressive manner," he said.
OTHER ATO NO-NOES:
- the ATO would never request the payment of a tax debt via gift or pre-paid cards such as iTunes and Visa cards.
- it would never ask for direct credit to be paid to a personal bank account.
- it would never request personal details, such as banking information. If such personal details were required, people would be redirected to ATO online services.
People who think they have been contacted by a fraudster or have fallen victim to a phone scam should contact the ATO on 1800 008 540.
