The South African Revenue Service (SARS), faced with a situation wherein a large percentage of South Africans haven’t been keeping up with their taxes, has decided to crack down on anyone and everyone who isn’t tax-compliant.

Overall, it’s not a bad thing, and if you are an upstanding citizen, you shouldn’t have any problems.

At least you shouldn’t have a problem with SARS.

Criminals have been capitalising on SARS’ efforts to crack down, and the general public’s limited knowledge of how taxes work, to scam people out of their hard-earned ‘Randelas’.

Per BusinessTech:

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is warning taxpayers about a number of new scams, spoofing communication that appears to be from the revenue collector.

The latest scam has seen members of the public randomly contacted with false emails made to look like they were sent from SARS.

However, the revenue service warned that these are in fact fraudulent emails aimed at enticing unsuspecting taxpayers to part with personal information such as bank account details.

If you receive an email from returns@sars.co.za or refunds@sars.co.za, it’s probably a scam.

To make things worse, the scams are quite sophisticated as scams go. For example, here’s the ‘Letter of Demand Scam’:

And the SARS ‘Correspondence for your Attention’ Scam:

For a full list of the latest scams targeting taxpayers, head here.

SARS also has some useful advice for staying safe:

• 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);
• 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 SMSes;
• SARS does not send .htm or .html attachments;
• SARS will never ask for your credit card details.

If you’re unsure, contact SARS to find out if what you’re reading is the real thing.

Paying taxes in South Africa is frustrating enough without being fleeced for extra money.

[source:businesstech]