AI-Powered Phishing Scams Target South African Taxpayers Ahead of Deadline

As the tax filing deadline looms, people are being scammed by AI artists. (Image made with GenAI) Fraudsters are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to make phishing e-mails and fake South African Revenue Service (SARS) websites more convincing, as taxpayers feed sensitive information into bots with tax filing deadline approaching. This is according to Kaspersky, whose researchers have identified phishing websites imitating SARS eFiling, as well as malicious e-mail attachments disguised as tax-related documents just ahead of the 23 October filing deadline for non-provisional individual taxpayers. Kaspersky’s warning followed a new wave of SMS and e-mail scams claiming that taxpayers were owed refunds and directing them to fraudulent websites. In one case, SARS confirmed that an SMS or e-mail offering a R48 900 refund was a phishing scam impersonating the tax authority. The security company adds that AI is making fraudulent correspondence harder to spot. In July, SARS warned that scammers were using AI to generate professional-looking e-mail templates that were more difficult to identify as fraudulent. This means some of the traditional warning signs, including poor wording and amateur-looking correspondence, are becoming less reliable, says Kaspersky, noting that a professional-looking message is not necessarily legitimate. There is another AI-related risk during tax season, cautions Kaspersky. Taxpayers may turn to chatbots and other AI tools for help understanding returns or tax questions, but it warns that tax documents contain sensitive personal and financial information, while AI-generated responses can contain errors. Uploading tax records, identity documents, banking information or other confidential data to an AI service could therefore expose information that would otherwise remain private, says the online security company. Examples of fake tax-related scams shared by Kaspersky. “AI can make complicated information easier to work through, but taxpayers should be careful about the information they provide to an external service. A tax return contains a detailed picture of someone’s financial and personal life,” says Chris Norton, general manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at Kaspersky. Norton adds: “Sensitive records should stay out of public AI tools, and important tax information should be checked through trusted sources.” Mark Walker, T4i director and former MD of IDC South Africa, says: “With AI, the threat is amplified significantly, both from the taxpayer and the SARS perspectives.” Taxpayers now receive highly-personalised and professionally-branded communications, purportedly from SARS, that connect to a “tax assistant or advisor” to help complete returns, says Walker. “These are extremely convincing and easily trap the unaware or rushed taxpayer into a world of pain.” South African Institute of Taxation CEO Professor Keith Engel says the tax profession has an important role to play as SARS modernises its administration. “Tax professionals must also evolve. Professional competence, ethical conduct and a strong understanding of the changing tax environment will remain essential to building confidence in the tax system.” One fake eFiling page asks victims for their username, password and phone number, while another uses what appears to be an Adobe PDF sign-in screen to obtain e-mail credentials, Kaspersky notes. The security company has also detected attachments with filenames such as “Tax Returns Of RXX,XXX.XXX” and “Final_Assessment_Notification-2026-0X-0X.pdf”. The accompanying e-mails use phrases such as “Refund due” or “SARS letter of demand” to encourage recipients to open the files. “By this point in the tax season, people are used to receiving messages about returns, assessments and refunds, so an e-mail like this may not immediately look out of place,” Norton says. “This is what scammers rely on. The closer we get to the deadline, the easier it is to act quickly because you think you are dealing