Global Courant 2023-05-24 12:37:10
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has warned taxpayers about a new scam that attempts to defraud people.
According to the IRS, the most recent scam is an email that appears to be from a Gauteng.gov.za email address with the subject line “Urgent letter from SARS attached for your attention.”
The scam is a PDF with a button to click called ‘Review account afterwards’.
SARS has warned taxpayers not to click on suspicious links.
If you hover your mouse over the link, it’s clear the link isn’t legitimate, SARS said.
Scams that attempt to defraud taxpayers are rampant. SARS has reported a total of 332 scams attempting to misuse SARS’s name.
SARS said to report or get more information about scams, email (email protected) or call the Fraud and Anti-Corruption Hotline on 080 000 2870. Click here to view all current SARS surveys, emails and text messages.
The tax authorities have given the following advice that you should pay attention to:
Do not open or reply to emails from unknown sources. Beware of emails requesting personal, tax, banking, and eFiling information (logins, passwords, PINs, credit/debit card details, etc.). SARS will never ask for your bank details in communications you receive by post, email or text message. However, for the purposes of telephone contact and authentication, SARS will verify your personal information. Importantly, SARS does not send you hyperlinks to other websites, not even those of banks. Watch out for fake text messages. SARS does not send *.htm or *.html attachments. SARS will never ask for your credit card information.
To ensure that taxpayers can legitimately check whether they are in arrears or not, they can contact the institution and ask account-related questions, including balance statements or an account statement, by texting SARS at 47277.
Send the following wording to 47277: Balance (space) ID number/passport number
See an example of the scam below:
Read: 12 extra taxes you pay on everything you buy in South Africa
