Spammers and scammers are taking advantage of the inevitability of taxes with a new wave of spam emails designed to steal personal information.

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has reported a scam going around where an email, which has been made to look as though it comes from CRA, asks Canadians to click on a link and enter personal information. The email entices the recipient with the promise of unclaimed refunds. According to reports, this scam isn’t new; it first went out last October, then again in December. The first batch was traced to Japan, and the second to the US.

The bogus email includes an embedded link, which takes the recipient to a web page that duplicates the CRA’s official web site, but is instead a phishing site. When the victim goes to that site, they are asked to enter in personal information. Potential victims that pay attention will note that the page is not a secure page however. Typically, when a taxing agency is gathering information of that sort, it will be through a secure page, which will begin with “https” instead of “http”, and a lock icon will appear on the browser. Also, those with a watchful eye will note that the web page in the URL box is not that of CRA, rather, it is a URL from Taiwan.

The Canadian spam is probably designed to orchestrate widespread identity theft. According to the CRA, the agency only very rarely communicates via email with taxpayers, and never requests personal information via email.

Canada isn’t the only place with tax-related phishing scams, however. In the UK, emails that appear to be from HMRC have been circulating, offering a similar tax rebate. Like its Canadian counterpart, HMRC does not communicate information about tax rebates via email.