A phishing campaign is fooling Indians into disclosing confidential data such as banking details, experts have warned, urging people to pay careful attention to any e-mail that purports to be from the Income Tax department.
In one instance, an email address resembling Income Tax department’s official donotreply@incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in targeted people. The scam e-mail was from donotreply@incometaxindiafiling.gov.in, almost exactly the same as I-T department’s generic mailer, but for the missing ‘e’ before ‘filing’. It urged the recipient to disclose bank account details.
“There has been a huge increase in fraudulent emails wherein people have been asked to give all their income and bank details and, naturally this needs to be handled very carefully,” Amarpal Chadha, tax partner at EY told Hindustan Times.
Such details can give scammers the ability to siphon funds or carry out identity thefts.
A senior official of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) urged people to be cautious. “We have a helpline and we want tax payers to use that whenever there is a doubt, we understand there are fake emails doing the rounds but tax payers must check details and match them with the data provided while filing,” the official said.
The I-T department has multiple addresses through which it communicates with assesses: donotreply@incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in, intimations@cpc.gov.in and campaign@cpc.gov.in.
{{/usCountry}}The I-T department has multiple addresses through which it communicates with assesses: donotreply@incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in, intimations@cpc.gov.in and campaign@cpc.gov.in.
{{/usCountry}}Filing income tax returns has also not been easy for many this year. Tax payers were required to link their PAN with their 12-digit Aadhaar numbers. Around 8 crore people have linked the two numbers till now.
Tax consultants said that in several instances the e-filing portal refused to accept the application code of the permanent account number (PAN).
The date for filing returns, has been extended to August 5.