With the filing season officially open and many taxpayers expecting possible refunds, it is unfortunately also a great opportunity for criminals to obtain personal details of taxpayers in order to commit fraud.
Taxpayers randomly receive false emails made to look as if these e-mails were sent from SARS. These are fraudulent e-mails aimed at enticing unsuspecting taxpayers to give up personal information such as bank account details.
Examples include e-mails that appear to be from returns@sars.co.za or refunds@sars.co.za indicating that taxpayers are eligible to receive tax refunds or have outstanding taxes and/or returns. These e-mails usually contain links to false forms and fake websites with the aim of fooling taxpayers into entering personal information which the criminals then extract and use fraudulently.
Taxpayers should take note of the following:
• Do not open or respond to e-mails from unknown sources.
• Beware of e-mails that ask for personal, tax, banking and eFiling login details.
• SARS will never request your banking details in any communication that you receive via post, e-mail, or SMS.
• SARS will never send any hyperlinks to other websites.
• SARS does not send *.htm or *.html attachments.
We urge our clients to direct any SARS correspondence or queries to tax@asl.co.za, or contact us at 021 840 1600, where after we will confirm the validity of the correspondence and advise you accordingly.