The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has issued an urgent warning to all taxpayers about a scam that has surfaced over the past few weeks that solicits money from taxpayers.

The most common approach of the scam is that a fraudulent letter would be faxed to the taxpayer - mostly a registered business - that uinforms the taxpayer that a refund was mistakenly paid into the taxpayer's bank account. In some instances, taxpayers are contacted telephonically or receive letters through the post.

The letter instructs the taxpayer to deduct bank charges and pay the balance into a bank account which supposedly belongs to SARS. A lot of pressure is put on the taxpayer to make the deposit. The amounts range from R 50 000 to R 1 million.

SARS has cautioned taxpayers not to pay any money into such accounts after receiving letters. It is not part of SARS's procedure to issue letters of this nature that claim that a refund was mistakenly issued to a taxpayer.

It must be emphasised that, in the unlikely event that a refund is mistakenly issued by SARS, SARS has the procedures in place to withdraw the money without involving taxpayers or demanding from them to transfer the money.

Some guidelines to people who receive such letters are:

Taxpayers must check their accounts to see if the funds allegedly paid into their account originated from a cheque deposit;
In many instances, the money would be reflected, however the account holder must VERIFY with their bank the source of the deposit and whether or not the account number into which the deposit is asked to be made is a SARS account;
The money, through a cheque deposit may reflect in the bank account but the cheque in most cases is a fraudulent cheque;
Communication by the suspected fraudsters normally contains only cellphone numbers as contact details that the taxpayer can use;
All authentic SARS correspondence have landline numbers.
A Special anti-fraud hotline, 0860 105 684, has been set up to handle any queries regarding the scam. We should advise taxpayers who have received such letters or any form of other correspondence to this effect to report the matter on this number urgently.

Issued by SARS Communications

25 August 2006