Receive an email from the IRS? Delete it

Under most circumstances, I would never recommend to ignore communications from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – except when it comes to emails. Understand this: the IRS will never reach out to taxpayers via email.

In fact, the IRS receives thousands of reports from taxpayers who report receiving suspicious emails, phone calls, faxes from the IRS. Some of them even contain the IRS logo. These goals of these scams – known as phishing – is to trick taxpayers into providing personal information like Social Security numbers and bank accounts in order to commit identity theft.

If you receive an e-mail claiming to be from the IRS that contains a request for personal information:

1. Do not reply.
2. Do not open any attachments. Attachments may contain malicious code that will infect your computer.
3. Do not click on any links.
   If you clicked on links in a suspicious e-mail or phishing website and entered confidential information, visit the IRS identity protection page.
4. Forward the e-mail as-is, to phishing@irs.gov.
5. After you forward the e-mail and/or header information to us, delete the original e-mail message you received.

The official IRS website is is http://www.irs.gov. Note, the .gov domain. The following websites are not affiliated with the Internal Revenue Service:

• www.irs.com
• www.irs.net
• www.irs.org

If you discover a website that claims to be the Internal Revenue Service, send the URL of the suspicious site to phishing@irs.gov. Please add in the subject line of the e-mail, 'Suspicious website'.

In most cases, the IRS will reach out to taxpayers via mail. If you do receive a letter or notice, Contact the IRS to determine if the mail is a legitimate IRS letter and reply if needed.