A number of times here at Scamicide we warn you about scams before they occur and our track record is pretty good.  Today’s Scam of the day is about one such scam that we have not yet seen, but will undoubtedly be coming soon.  The IRS enacted new regulations that became effective on January 1, 2022 that require third party payment networks such as Venmo, PayPal and Cash App to send users an IRS 1099-K form for transactions done each year.  Previously a 1099-K was only required to be sent if gross payments were more than $20,000 for the year or more than 200 transactions were done during the year.  The purpose of the change in the law was to make sure that such transactions were properly documented on the income tax returns of the users of these networks, particularly gig workers and contract workers.

Under the new law, people receiving payment for goods and services through these third party networks will be asked for their Social Security number in order to have their payments processed.  This will certainly lead to identity thieves sending text messages and emails to people to trick them into providing their Social Security number or to lure them into clicking on malware infected links.  The identity thieves may pose as businesses, accountants, the IRS or your third party payment network.

TIPS

Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.

If you do use Venmo, PayPal, Cash App or any of the other third party payment networks and are subject to this new law, you have to remember that whenever you receive an email or a text message requesting personal information, you can never be sure who is actually contacting you so you should never provide the requested information until you have confirmed that the request was indeed legitimate.

It is important to remember that the new threshold charge does not apply to payments made to family or friends as gifts, but only to payments for goods and services.

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide was  cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive  free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address in the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”