ato logo
Search Suggestion:

Scam data

See the latest data on ATO impersonation scams.

Last updated 9 February 2025

Latest scam data

January update

In January 2025, we received 5,806 reports of ATO impersonation scams, which is a 19% increase from December.

There were no reports of payments made to scammers.

The demographic who most reported providing personal information to scammers were people over 65 years old.

Find out how to protect your personal information and verify or report a scam.

For legitimate ways to pay your tax debt, see How to pay.

Scam channel data

We continue to observe email and SMS as the primary channel used by scammers when targeting the community. These channels combined make up 98.9% of all scams reported to us in January.

Table 1: Financial year to date scam channel data

Month

Email

SMS

Phone

Social media

Other

January 2025

90.9%

8.1%

0.9%

0.1%

0.0%

December 2024

90.4%

8.9%

0.6%

0.1%

0.0%

November 2024

91.8%

7.2%

0.8%

0.2%

0.0%

October 2024

77.5%

20.8%

1.3%

0.4%

0.0%

September 2024

82.5%

15.6%

1.2%

0.7%

0.0%

August 2024

76.7%

21.7%

1.3%

0.3%

0.0%

July 2024

78.9%

18.4%

2%

0.6%

0.1%

Table 2: Running total scam channel data for 2024–25 financial year

Email

SMS

Phone

Social media

Other

85.5%

13.1%

1.1%

0.3%

0.0%

The social media category includes scams that occur through platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn and WhatsApp.

 

QC56423