Many people have gotten their advance Child Tax Credit payments this year, but scammers are taking advantage of this new program to try to trick you out of money or information. They’re pretending to be the IRS, contacting people by phone, text, email, and social media — and sending people to official-looking websites that look just like the IRS.
Before you respond to anyone who reaches out to you, here are a few things to know about the IRS and the Child Tax Credit:
- Check your eligibility for the tax credit, if you haven’t gotten any advance payment this year, and sign up by following the IRS’ instructions.
- The IRS used information from filed tax returns to automatically sign people up for the Child Tax Credit. If you aren’t getting payments automatically, it might be because you didn’t file a tax return for 2019 or 2020. You’ll need to sign up for these payments if you didn’t file.
- The IRS (and other government agencies) will never text, email, or contact you on social media asking for your personal or financial information. But scammers will.
- The IRS does not use robocalls and will not call about something urgent or threatening. The IRS will also not call to ask taxpayers to give or verify financial information to get your Child Tax Credit payments. Anyone who does is a scammer.
- The IRS will never ask for a payment by gift card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency. The IRS and other government agencies will also never ask you to pay to get financial help. You know who does? Scammers.
If you have questions, start at irs.gov to get answers. And if someone says they’re from the IRS and contacts you about the Child Tax Credit, report it to the IRS and ReportFraud.ftc.gov. If you think a scammer has any of your personal or financial information, visit IdentityTheft.gov to get a recovery plan.
3 Comments
Read Our Privacy Act Statement
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
Comment Policy
This is a moderated blog; we review all comments before they are posted. We expect participants to treat each other and the bloggers with respect. We will not post comments that do not comply with our commenting policy. We may edit comments to remove links to commercial websites or personal information before posting them.
We won’t post:
Comments submitted to this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include personal information. Also, do not use this blog to report fraud; instead, file a complaint.