I wrote an article about this time last year (yep, we’ve been doing this blog thing for over a year now!!) about an email doing the rounds, seemingly from the tax office, asking for bank account details. If you missed it at the time, you can get a quick recap now.
We figured that now is as good a time as any, to remind you again that the tax office will never email you asking for bank account or credit card details. And certainly never to ask for your PIN or access codes.
There’s a few different scams going around at the moment with people pretending to be tax office staff. Some have official-looking email addresses… other use something like “service@ato.gov.corn.au“. Yes, corn. Some direct you to online forms to complete while others are a little more obvious in their approach.
The tax office are also aware of many such scams, and have a section of their website dedicated to updates on such things. You can find that here, if you’re interested.
So, as always, be alert and don’t provide your bank details or tax file number to anyone unless you’re sure that it’s going to the right place. And while we can now get your tax refund banked straight into your account, all we need is your BSB and account number. No password necessary.