Although the federal tax filing season ended on April 15, the Internal Revenue Service continues to see new tax scams. Two new schemes target families of those serving in the Armed Forces and e-mail users. In both schemes, people represent themselves as being from the IRS.

The IRS has seen isolated instances of the scam that targets the families of those serving in the Armed Forces.

The IRS warns consumers to beware of any variation of a scenario in which a telephone caller posing as an IRS employee tells a family member that he is entitled to a $4,000 refund because his relative is in the Armed Forces and then requests a credit card number to cover a $42 fee for postage. The scammer provides an actual IRS toll-free number as the call back number in order to make the call seem legitimate. However, the scammer then makes numerous unauthorized purchases with the victim’s credit card number.

Genuine IRS employees who call taxpayers do not ask for credit card numbers or request fees for payment of a refund.

In another scheme, victims receive an e-mail that appears to be from the IRS. The e-mail contains links to a non-IRS Internet Web page that asks for personal and financial information. Such information could be used to steal the respondent’s identity and get access to sensitive financial data or accounts.

Additional information on tax scams may be found on the genuine IRS Web site, www.irs.gov, by going to The Newsroom page and then clicking on the “Scams/Consumer Alerts” link under the Topics sidebar.

Both of these schemes are being reviewed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which is authorized to investigate the misuse of the IRS name, insignia, seals and symbols.

Taxpayers who are on the receiving end of one of these scams should contact TIGTA by calling the toll-free fraud referral hotline at 1-800-366-4484, faxing a complaint to 202-927-7018 or writing to the TIGTA Hotline, P.O. Box 589, Ben Franklin Station, Washington, D.C. 20044-0589. TIGTA’s Web site is located at www.ustreas.gov/tigta.