The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Security Summit partners issued a consumer alert on December 3 about the growing threat of bad tax advice on social media that continues to dupe people into filing inaccurate tax returns.
The alert came on day two of National Tax Security Awareness Week, with the IRS and the Security Summit partners spotlighting the wildly inaccurate tax claims that continue to build across social media. These scams take many different forms and make outlandish promises to inflate refunds.
“The growth of bad tax advice on social media continues to grow, luring unsuspecting taxpayers into filing bad tax returns,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “We urge people to do some research before falling for these scams. Finding a trusted tax professional or visiting IRS.gov is a better way to research a tax issue than relying on someone talking in their car or their kitchen about a nonexistent tax hack.”
For years, members of the Security Summit — representing state tax agencies, tax professionals, tax software companies and the financial industry — have worked to raise awareness about tax-related identity theft and related tax scams.
To counter this growing threat of tax scams, many of the Summit members have joined together to launch a related group, the Coalition Against Scam and Scheme Threats (CASST). Throughout the past year, the IRS and the Summit partners saw an escalation of new scams and bad advice surface on social media that promise to magically enrich taxpayers.
This year, the public has seen the emergence and rapid spread of financial scams ranging from the Fuel Tax Credit on federal tax returns to “pig-butchering” scams that involve investments in fake cryptocurrencies that ultimately leave the victims penniless.
The newly formed CASST alliance, comprising dozens of public and private-sector organizations, is working cooperatively to combat these growing scams and protect taxpayers againstfiling inaccurate tax returns fueled by social media advice. Increasing awareness of new and emerging tax schemes on social media is one part of a multipronged effort by the CASST coalition to combat tax scams and fraud.
Scams that promise easy money through claiming inaccurate credits or other schemes are seen in social media and in other places. Some producers of misleading content on social media are driven by a criminal profit motive, while others are simply trying to gain attention and clicks, with little regard for the risks it poses to their followers.
These threats are present year-round, but the approach of the 2025 tax filing season means that misinformed influencers and outright scammers will intensify efforts to persuade the public to take their bad advice.
Instead of looking to shady or ill-informed influencers on social media, a better option for taxpayers to learn how to properly use tax forms and claim credits is to go to IRS.gov and follow IRS social media channels.