SMS from "Income Tax Department" offers a refund — click here to claim
SMS or email claiming to be from the Income Tax Department says you have a pending refund of ₹15,000-₹40,000 and includes a link to "claim" it. The link goes to a fake e-filing page that captures your PAN, bank account, IFSC, and net-banking password.
Also known as: IT refund phishing SMS, fake income tax refund link, e-filing portal phishing
Already happened to you? Do this in the next few minutes
Call 1930 now- 1 Call 1930 — the national cyber-crime helpline — right now. The sooner you report, the better the chance of freezing the money before it moves.
- 2 Call your bank to freeze the account and block the card immediately. Use the number printed on your card, never a number from the message or caller.
- 3 File a report at cybercrime.gov.in and keep every message, screenshot, and transaction ID.
What to do right now
- 1 Do not click. Delete the SMS
- 2 If you want to check refund status, log in directly at incometax.gov.in or your e-filing account
- 3 Real refund updates appear in the 'Worklist' and 'Refund Status' sections after login — not in SMS
- 4 If you entered net-banking credentials on a fake page, change your password immediately, alert your bank, and consider freezing your account temporarily
- 5 Report at https://cybercrime.gov.in or call 1930 (national cyber helpline).
Red flags
- ⚠ Income Tax Department never sends refund links over SMS. Refunds are credited directly to your registered bank account
- ⚠ URL is not incometax.gov.in but something like incometax-refund.in or itrefund-cbdt.com
- ⚠ Refund amount is suspiciously round (₹15,000, ₹30,750) and consistent across many victims
- ⚠ Asks for net-banking password or full debit card details — IT Department never needs these
Income Tax phishing peaks around July–September (the ITR filing window) and again in January–March (refund-processing window). The scammers know when people are expecting refunds and time their texts accordingly.
The single best defense: never check tax refund status via a link in any message. Always type incometax.gov.in into your browser yourself.
If you entered your net-banking password on a phishing site: change the password on your bank’s real site immediately, then call your bank’s fraud line. The faster, the better. Then report at cybercrime.gov.in and call 1930.