The e-mail from the Internal Revenue Service states that you are due a tax refund.

Isn’t that quite a windfall, just when you are hoping to buy a new car? Well, don’t choose those new wheels just yet, because this has all the earmarks of a scam. It is a form of phishing and is one of the IRS’s dirty dozen tax scams for 2006. It works this way. The e-mail asks you to click on a link to a form that you have to complete and submit for your refund. The website is very official looking. You are asked to provide your social security and credit card numbers.

How can you be sure it is a scam? The IRS does not use e-mails to initiate contact with taxpayers about issues related to their accounts. Never.

A variation of this scheme is to tell unsuspecting taxpayers they are “under audit” and could make things right by divulging selected private financial information.

Just remember if it’s an email that claims to be from the IRS, it is a fraud. Period.