Well, here we are mid-year, the tax season behind us and yet, the tax scammers just keep coming up with fresh ways to trick taxpayers!

While the rest of us are getting on with our lives, feeling the relief of having satisfied the tax man (or not), the criminals are hard at work finding on new targets. They never seem to sleep.

Just the other day, Accounting Today.com, one of our industry publications posted the following:

The Internal Revenue Service issued a new warning Friday to taxpayers about bogus phone calls from IRS impersonators demanding payment for a non-existent tax that they call the ‘federal student tax.’

Whether you have student loans or not, be vigilant. You could be getting a call from someone trying to scare you into parting with your money.

They have already scammed taxpayers out of billions of dollars, so beware.

According to the same AccountingToday.com article,

in this newest twist, they try to convince people to wire money immediately to the scammer. If the victim does not fall quickly enough for this fake ‘federal student tax,’ the scammer threatens to report the student to the police.

If you are a student or have college students in your family, alert them right away to take this new threat seriously.

With social media, it’s easy to see how these highly sophisticated criminals can ferret out the information they need to hone in on these unsuspecting targets. They study fear tactics like the best students.

That’s how they get away with so much cash.