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| https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6138.pdf |
In February, the IRS announced a new online reporting tool for suspected tax fraud, scams, and illegal activities. Smartly, the link is on the main page (in the dark blue line):
This month, the IRS released the 2026 Dirty Dozen list of various scams to watch out for, such as fake charities seeking your money, phishing to get you to click on links that enable the scammer to get information from you, AI-enabled robocalls impersonating an IRS employee, misleading tax advice on social media, and more.
For a list of the dirty dozen since the IRS started this in 2001, please visit my table. You’ll see that a few have disappeared but most continue or have morphed into digital scams.
The IRS also created two nice posters (pubs) with a QR code to encourage people to report scams. I think that while the IRS or other law enforcement agencies might not find your scammer, with more information, they do find some and can alert the public to new scams and ways to avoid them. These pubs are 6138 and 6139.
Something that has also changed is getting emails that clearly look suspect such as because they are poorly written with grammar and spelling errors. Well, scammers likely are using AI to write more grammatically correct, enticing looking emails and texts – we all need to be extra cautious. When in doubt, don’t click but instead find another way to verify if the information is valid, such as logging into the online account they are talking about (using your usual link rather than the one in the email), such as your IRS online account (or one I get frequently is that my Amazon account has been suspended (!) when it has not).
What do you think? What more can be done to help people from being the victim of identity theft or falling for a tax scam such as claiming a bogus tax credit or giving money to scammers pretending to be the IRS or a state tax agency?