BATON ROUGE - The Louisiana Department of Revenue is warning taxpayers about scams from people attempting to steal their personal information.

Criminals are contacting people and identifying themselves as representatives of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or state’s Department of Revenue.

According to the department, scam artists are threatening taxpayers with penalties for supposed offenses such as non-filling or delinquent taxes and demanding bank account numbers, Social Security numbers and other personal information.

These scams often involve unsolicited emails with links to web sites that pose as legitimate sites in order to capture the information.

The Louisiana Department of Revenue advises that it will never initiate contact with a taxpayer to request personal information. The actual department contacts the taxpayer through mail or by phone and it is often to request documentation to support claims on a tax return and is asked to submit information by mail or fax.

Further, taxpayers who are delinquent on their taxes are initiated through mail and are never initiated with a phone call.

When the department must verify a taxpayer’s identity to prevent fraud, notification takes place through the mail and the taxpayer is directed to the Identity Verification Quiz on the LDR website; or they are asked to mail identification information to the department.

For more information about “phishing” scams, visit IRS.gov.