Members of the public have alerted IRAS that they have received suspicious calls from persons claiming to be IRAS officers. These scammers usually highlight supposed tax mistakes made by members of the public, and request that they pay their outstanding taxes to a designated bank account, or ask them to provide their credit card numbers in order to get a tax refund.

In recent instances, the telephone numbers displayed on the caller IDs included “97812000” and “63568387”. In some cases, the scammers were able to mask their real numbers and instead manipulate IRAS’ caller ID using Caller ID spoofing technology. 

These are scams. Affected individuals are advised to ignore such calls, and lodge police reports if they have fallen victim to such frauds.

If in doubt whether any call received in this period or in the future is indeed made by an IRAS officer as claimed by the caller, members of the public are advised to request for the caller’s full name, telephone number and department, time of call, and validate this through IRAS’ QSM hotline at 1800 356 8225 to verify if a call had been made.

Members of the public who receive such calls should:

• Be vigilant. IRAS will not ask you to make a payment to a third party’s bank account through a telephone call. IRAS also does not offer payment options by “iTunes credits” or “Steam credits”.
• Refrain from transferring any money to the caller, either via remittance agencies, banks or any other means.

• Refrain from providing personal information such as name, identification number, passport number, bank account or credit card details to the caller.

• Be Aware of Payment Modes to IRAS.

Payment modes to IRAS include GIRO, Internet Banking Bill payment, DBS PayLah! Mobile App, Phone Banking, ATM, AXS Station, SAM Kiosk and NETS. For payments to IRAS made via Internet Banking, DBS Paylah!, ATM Bill Payment and AXS Mobile and Internet, taxpayers must select ‘IRAS’ from the list of payees. Cheque payments must only be made payable to one of the following payees:

• Comptroller of Income Tax
• Comptroller of Goods & Services Tax
• Comptroller of Property Tax
• Commissioner of Stamp Duties
  

IRAS will also not ask for confidential personal details through calls nor emails. Confidential documents such as tax return forms, notices of assessment, refund letters or other tax statements will not be sent through emails unless specifically requested by the taxpayer. Confidential documents are deposited in the secured tax portal at mytax.iras.gov.sg. Taxpayers may log in to the portal using their Singpass to retrieve their tax statements or e-File their tax returns via mytax.iras.gov.sg.

To protect themselves from scams, phishing and other online frauds, members of the public are advised to refer to IRAS’ advisory on scam & fraudulent activities.

Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore