Tax Season Scams: How to Protect Yourself Before the October 23 Deadline
The filing deadline for non-provisional individual taxpayers is October 23, and with fewer than six weeks to go, a lot of South Africans are rushing to get their returns in. Scammers know it. Cybersecurity company Kaspersky has warned that phishing attacks and fake eFiling websites are on the rise, and that this season's scams are harder to spot than usual.
Why scammers love the filing deadline
By now, most people are used to getting messages about returns, assessments and refunds. A suspicious email doesn't necessarily stand out. As Kaspersky's General Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa, Chris Norton, put it, that familiarity is exactly what scammers rely on. The closer the deadline gets, the easier it is to act quickly because you think something needs your immediate attention.
SARS has also urged taxpayers not to leave filing until the last minute. Apart from avoiding penalties, filing early gives you more time to think before you click.
What the scams look like
Kaspersky has recently identified a few specific tactics:
- Fake eFiling pages. One imitation site asks victims for their username, password and phone number.
- Fake Adobe PDF sign-in screens. Another uses what looks like an Adobe login to harvest email credentials.
- Malicious attachments. Researchers have found files with names like "Tax Returns Of RXX, XXX.XXX" and "Final_Assessment_Notification-2026-0X-0X.pdf."
- Pressure phrases. Emails often use wording such as "Refund due" or "SARS letter of demand" to get you to open the file without checking where it came from.
AI has made scams harder to spot
It used to be easier to catch a fake. Awkward wording and sloppy design were giveaways. Earlier this year, SARS warned that scammers are using AI to produce professional-looking email templates, following a wave of SMS and email scams claiming taxpayers were owed refunds and sending them to fake websites.
The takeaway is that a polished message is no longer a sign of a legitimate one. A scam can look completely professional.
A second AI risk: what you feed the chatbot
AI also creates a different kind of exposure during tax season. Plenty of people use chatbots to make sense of their returns or answer tax questions, which is understandable. But Kaspersky points out that a tax return is a comprehensive picture of your financial and personal life, and AI-generated answers can contain mistakes.
Norton's advice is that sensitive records, such as tax documents, ID documents and banking details, shouldn't be uploaded to public AI tools, and that critical tax information should be verified through trusted sources. Asking a general question about how a deduction works is one thing. Handing over your full return is another.
How to protect yourself
- Remove the urgency. Scammers want you to act fast. Slow down.
- Don't click links in unexpected tax messages. Go directly to SARS eFiling or the SARS MobiApp yourself and check whether the communication is real.
- Remember what SARS never asks for. SARS has said it will never request passwords, one-time PINs, banking PINs or eFiling login credentials by email, SMS, social media or phone.
- Be wary of unexpected attachments. Don't open files you weren't expecting, especially those with tax-related names.
- Keep personal data out of public AI tools. Verify anything important through official sources.
The bottom line
As Norton noted, taking a few minutes to verify a message through an official channel can be the difference between completing your return successfully and handing valuable information to a scammer. With the deadline approaching, that pause is worth it.
Source: Kaspersky commentary, as reported by Daily Investor.
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