SARS warns of new scam

27 September 2021
Tax
South African Accounting Academy

Members of the public are randomly emailed with false “spoofed” emails made to look as if these emails were sent from SARS, but are in fact fraudulent emails aimed at enticing unsuspecting taxpayers to part with personal information such as bank account details.

These emails that appear to be from a sars.gov.za e-mail address, indicating that taxpayers are eligible to receive tax or monetary benefits, or threatening some form of harm. These emails contain links to false forms and fake websites made to look like the “real thing”, but with the aim of fooling people into entering personal information such as bank account details which the criminals then extract and use fraudulently.

Please note these are scams and SARS taxpayers should take note of the following:

Do not open or respond to emails from unknown sources.
Beware of emails that ask for personal, tax, banking and eFiling details (login credentials, passwords, pins, credit / debit card information, etc.).
SARS will never request your banking details in any communication that you receive via post, email, or SMS. However, for the purpose of telephonic engagement and authentication purposes, SARS will verify your personal details. Importantly, SARS will not send you any hyperlinks to other websites - even those of banks.
Beware of false sms's.
SARS does not send *.htm or *.html attachments.
SARS will never ask for your credit card details.

Click here to access the latest example of the scam e-mail:

https://www.sars.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/Docs/Scams/SARS-Scam-302-Notification-to-SARS-15-September-2021.pdf

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