The Internal Revenue Service has issued several consumer warnings regarding the fraudulent use of the IRS name or logo to illegally gain access to financial information for the purpose of identity theft. Because these emails are sent out as "bait," this is called "phishing."

In some cases, these fraudulent emails may also contain links to the TaxAct website to provide a sense of legitimacy to the otherwise fraudulent phishing attempts by internet scam artists. Although these emails may appear to come directly from the IRS or other official source, they are not affiliated with the IRS, TaxAct, or any other legitimate agency.

We recommend that you forward this email to your email provider to report it. You may also forward this message to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov.

You may at times receive legitimate emails from TaxAct, but you should not click on a link in an email unless you are certain of the authenticity of the sender. Strategies to avoid phishing attempts can be found by searching on the internet for "phishing." Many sites are dedicated to the prevention of identity theft and provide information and steps you can take to protect your personal information.

You may also Contact TaxAct Service & Support to verify the legitimacy of an email offer you have received.

Go to the IRS Tax Scams/Consumer Alerts webpage to review more information from the IRS regarding current phishing schemes.

Note that any link in the information above is updated each year automatically and will take you to the most recent version of the webpage or document at the time it is accessed.