Does the IRS contact taxpayers by email? What you need to know

The IRS does not send emails to taxpayers without their permission. If you receive a suspicious message claiming to be from the IRS or the U.S. Treasury, it could be a phishing scam designed to steal your personal or financial information.

What should you do with a suspicious IRS email?

The IRS recommends that taxpayers do not reply to the message, click on any links or open attachments. Instead, the suspicious email should be reported to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov.

For an IRS-related message, use “IRS” as the subject line. The agency recommends saving the email as a file and sending it as an attachment, using the “Forward as attachment” option if available, or sending the email header. Simply forwarding the message can remove important information that investigators may need to identify the scam.

Taxpayers should also report the fraudulent email to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) and then delete the message. The IRS also allows taxpayers to report scams to the Federal Trade Commission.

What if you already shared personal information?

If the scam resulted in your money or identity being stolen, the IRS says you should report the fake message and follow its guidance for victims of scams and identity theft.

The key point is that taxpayers should not assume an email is legitimate simply because it uses the IRS name or logo. When in doubt, do not interact with the message and report it directly through the IRS channels.