Police and the ATO are again warning people to be on the alert for calls purporting to be from the tax office after a Banora Point woman reported that she had been hit by scammers last week.
The woman told Tweed Heads police on Saturday (June 25) that the previous week she had received a telephone call advising that she had an outstanding tax debt, after an audit.
Police told the woman to ignore the caller.
Australian Tax Office (ATO) Second Commissioner Geoff Leeper has said that the ATO is very concerned about taxpayer privacy and is reminding people of the key differences between a scam of this nature and a genuine call from the ATO.
‘We make thousands of outbound calls to taxpayers a week, but there are some key differences to a legitimate call from the ATO and a call from a potential scammer’ said Mr Leeper.
‘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. If you’re not sure, hang up and call us back on 1800 008 540,’ said Mr Leeper.
Mr Leeper also said that scammers pretending to be from the ATO are generally more common during tax time and encouraged people to be vigilant and to protect their personal information.
If people think they may have fallen victim to a phone scam, contact the ATO on 1800 008 540.
For more information and examples of recent scams visit the ATO website or SCAMwatch.
The scammers have contacted me as well, and although initially my heart dropped, I knew that I was not guilty of any tax eversion and something was suspicious. They even threatened me with jail…But soon after I started challenging them about their facts and figures they suddenly hung up.
I have also been contacted. I was not fooled & told them so.
I keep getting calls from ‘Telstra’ regarding activity they have noticed on my computer. ‘John’ who claims he was born in Melbourne but has quite a thick accent, wanted me to type a command sequence into a run menu. This would have given him remote access to my computer 🙁 so I spun him along for about 15 minutes and didn’t type anything. While I was wasting his time, he’s not scamming someone who maybe does have an account with Telstra and not a Mac computer and thinks Telstra would call them to help them clear up unwanted, dangerous files on their computers.