What is the Most Trending Tax Season Scam in 2024?

2024 tax season is in full swing, and we are seeing the expected jump in scam calls posing as the IRS or offering illegitimate tax services. The same scams reappear every year, but this year bad actors claiming to offer tax debt relief services are driving much of the traffic according to insights from TNS’ robocall protection team. 

How Does it Work? 

This scam is typically a pre-recorded message from someone posing as a tax relief agent. The caller will typically leave a voicemail with a number to call back that will take the targeted victim to a live agent. The scammer will likely charge an up-front fee for pre-qualification, deem you as “qualified” for tax debt relief, and then never file the paperwork with the IRS.  

What are the Major Red Flags? 

  1. An agent calling to offer tax debt relief should cause immediate suspicion as there are many steps needed to qualify. In most cases, legitimate support would come in the form of an extension on time needed to pay the taxes back. An individual who is seeking this assistance would have to seek out the programs that offer legitimate debt relief as it is very unlikely that these groups would be cold calling.
  2. Highly optimistic promises are a major warning when receiving one of these calls. The bad actor may claim that they can settle all your debt or a large portion of it, which is very rarely something that will happen. For someone who is carrying a large amount of debt and is desperate for help, they may be susceptible to believing these promises, but it will likely lead to the victim being in a worse situation.
  3. An overly simple process is another major indicator of a tax relief scam. As mentioned before, being granted tax debt relief is not a quick process. The scammers may claim there is no need for a background check and fail to ask about your financial background before pre-qualifying the victim for debt relief. These are major red flags as those are the types of questions the IRS would need to know if they were to grant someone tax debt relief.  

A good way to identify a call as a scam is to ask about the company’s refund policy. There are legitimate services that provide tax debt assistance such as the Better Business Bureau and the IRS’ guidelines on choosing tax professionals can help identify legitimate agencies.  

It is best practice to never engage with unknown numbers and report phone numbers being used by scammers to your carrier. If you believe you are the victim of a scam, you can report it to your local police, state attorney’s general office and the FTC. 

Call-blocking apps, including those powered by TNS Call Guardian®, are also a great resource for reporting and blocking unwanted robocalls. Stay vigilant and share information about scams with others. 

Call Guardian is a registered trademark of Transaction Network Services, Inc. 

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Unwanted Calls Nationwide Snapshot

 

 

TNS Unwanted Calling Index Last 12 Months Chart Image

 

TNS estimates that more than 59 billion unwanted calls were made in the last 12 months representing a 19% decrease over the last 12 months versus the previous 12 months. Unwanted calls decreased 8% from January to February at 4.4B. This represents a 10% decrease from February 2023 to February 2024.

Unwanted calls are comprised of nuisance calls and high-risk calls. The severity of harm of nuisance calls are moderate. The severity of harm for high-risk calls is deemed as a major invasion of privacy that can cause emotional distress.

TNS Heatmap of Originating Unwanted Calls

Top 10 Area Codes for Generating Unwanted Calls – February 2024

Top 10 Area Codes for Generating Unwanted Calls – January 2024

Top 10 Area Codes for Generating Unwanted Calls – February 2023

Rank

NPA

Area

Total

1

336

NC

15,101,779

2

919

NC

13,820,209

3

704

NC

13,787,958

4

910

NC

12,464,610

5

909

CA

11,814,448

6

706

GA

11,456,302

7

407

FL

11,300,335

8

614

OH

11,243,560

9

843

SC

10,822,259

10

330

OH

10,810,815

Rank

NPA

Area

Total

1

336

NC

15,574,685

2

919

NC

14,141,216

3

704

NC

13,932,055

4

910

NC

12,877,406

5

706

GA

12,230,544

6

330

OH

11,898,161

7

407

FL

11,735,746

8

614

OH

11,684,023

9

513

OH

11,609,346

10

909

CA

11,575,276

Rank

NPA

Area

Total

1

480

AZ

7,619,922

2

602

AZ

6,175,166

3

720

CO

5,847,049

4

520

AZ

5,735,420

5

402

NE

5,447,468

6

209

CA

5,331,142

7

909

CA

5,136,990

8

239

FL

5,113,643

9

910

NC

5,078,641

10

470

GA

4,982,108

TNS Unwanted Call Indices

 

TNS Calling Trust Index – Last 12 Months

TNS Complaint Index – Last 12 Months

 

TNS Calling Trust Index - Last 12 Months Chart Image

The TNS Calling Trust Index is a measure of the crowd-source feedback for the unwanted calls that TNS receives in relation to the total number of calls to a subscriber. The index gives an indication of the consumer trust in voice calling and pulls data from our robocall protection platform TNS Call Guardian®.

 

TNS Negative Calling Index Last 12 Months Chart Image

The TNS Complaint Index is a measure of the FCC complaints for the Do-Not-Call List in relation to the total number of unwanted calls seen by TNS. The index gives an indication to how many consumers are reporting complaints to the FCC relative to the number of unwanted robocalls they receive.

Take Action for Robocall Protection, go to: ReportARobocall.com

TNS Call Guardian uses real-time call events combined with crowd-sourced data to create accurate and comprehensive reputation profiles differentiating legitimate users from abusive, fraudulent and unlawful ones. Reporting robocall incidents adds important data making our solutions more robust.

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