Matthew Piepenburg, partner at Von Greyerz, breaks down what’s really driving the gold price, going beyond headlines to the ongoing debasement of the US dollar.
He also discusses silver market dynamics.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Jeff Clark, founder of Paydirt Prospector, remains bullish on the outlook for gold and silver, emphasizing that cash is key when prices correct.
‘Even though I’m very long, and even though I haven’t taken profits on a lot of things, the number one antidote to a crash or a correction is your cash level,’ he said.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Speaking ahead of this week’s gold and silver price correction, Chris Vermeulen, chief market strategist at TheTechnicalTraders.com, said the metals were due for a ‘significant pullback.’
After that, they’ll be positioned for a new leg up.
‘There will be a time definitely to get back into metals, because I think metals will go dramatically higher from where they are right now,’ he explained. ‘But I do think that’s a year or two out.’
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Political scientists contend that a defining characteristic of the state is its monopoly on the use of force (or violence). Meanwhile, economists are quick to emphasize that monopolies are slow and reluctant to innovate, and they charge higher prices for lower quality goods and services than they would under more competitive conditions. Thus, it is no surprise that we get very little innovation in governance.
However, with cheap commercial flights to almost anywhere on the planet and with the internet allowing for individuals to work and manage their assets remotely, there are geo-arbitrage opportunities in terms of governance. A North American or European can maintain dollar or euro sources of income, while residing in a country with relatively low cost yet high standard of living, lower taxes, and access to beaches. This same person may hold assets in yet another country and bank in another still.
The late Harry Schultz coined the term “flag theory,” which is the idea that a person can maximize personal freedoms by:
In sum, flag theory refers to arranging your affairs to optimize for a combination of the best governance (with favorable tax rates playing an important part of that) and lifestyle.
We might add to Schultz’s flag theory by emphasizing the importance of owning assets that are highly portable and outside the traditional banking system (Bitcoin, for example), hosting any websites on servers within countries that are committed to free speech, and communicating – whenever possible – over encrypted and decentralized means. (The Signal app, for example, is encrypted-by-default, yet centralized. The XMPP protocol enables communications that can easily be encrypted and is decentralized, meaning the protocol does not rely on any single app or entity to coordinate users). All of these factors combined work together to describe what authors William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson called “the sovereign individual” in their 1997 book by that title.
Charles M. Tiebout argued in his 1956 paper “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures” that mobile “consumer-voters” are able to “[pick] that community which best satisfies his preference pattern for public goods.” Tiebout argued that competition exists on local levels of governance that does not on the national level. These local communities, Tiebout wrote, are forced to compete against one another to attract new residents. In his own words, “The greater the number of communities and the greater the variance between them, the closer the consumer will come to fully realizing his preference position.”
In 1970, Albert O. Hirschman’s book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty explored how “member-customers” seek to resolve problems caused by the decline of firms, organizations, and states. Hirschman wrote that member-customers have the option to either vocalize disagreement (“voice”) in an effort “to change… an objectionable state of affairs” or to abandon one organization for another (“exit”). He argued that while political scientists tend to emphasize the power of voice and economists the power of exit, both undervalue the other’s favorite. However, Hirschman stressed repeatedly that the voice option without a plausible threat to exit (and without the existence of a competing alternative to exit to) is “handicapped.” But beyond exit merely improving the state of affairs for the member-customer, he also believed that “exit has an essential role to play in restoring quality performance of government” itself.
James M. Buchanan’s 1954 paper “Individual Choice in Voting and the Market” outlines key differences between ballot box voting and voting in the market. (In Hirschman’s terminology, ballot box voting would be one way of manifesting “voice”, and voting in the market often involves “exit”). Among the key differences identified by Buchanan is the greater uncertainty with ballot box voting. In the market, a voter can choose between a variety of existing alternatives; in ballot-box voting, he chooses between potential alternatives and “he is never secure in his belief that his vote will count positively.”
Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter identifies systematic biases that prevent voters from thinking rationally about political matters. Caplan argues that the problem of political ignorance is a demand problem, not a supply problem. That is, political information is rarely in short supply. In the Information Age, the daily human experience is one of information overload. Legal scholar Ilya Somin builds upon the systematic biases identified by Caplan in his own book Democracy and Political Ignorance and makes the case that “foot voting” (meaning physically relocating one’s residence as well as taking one’s business elsewhere) gives citizens “strong incentives to learn about the results and evaluate them objectively.” Both Caplan and Somin have written other books exploring the economic and philosophical implications of the right to move across political borders.
So how do we consolidate this literature in a way that makes sense for a global market for governance? While Tiebout confined his thinking to the market for public goods provided by competing local levels of government, we can apply it more widely to globally-mobile consumer-voters shopping for the best jurisdictions to be governed in terms of where they physically live, where they incorporate their companies, and where they choose to bank and hold their assets.
From Hirschman, we understand that voice has value, but a willingness to exit from a jurisdiction (with ourselves and our capital) can bring about swift and meaningful change to our lives in a way that remaining within the country of our birth and vocalizing opposition to decline in governance cannot.
From Buchanan, we understand that our actions within markets often provide more favorable trade-offs when compared to ballot box voting. But we could bring Buchanan’s analysis a step further by noting that for those willing to move to new jurisdictions, the limited and relatively static state of affairs in governance within a country need not apply so much. There is, in fact, a global marketplace for governance. States may monopolize governance within their own territories, but shopping among those monopolies opens up exciting possibilities.
Lastly, Somin’s concept of “foot voting” drives home the point that if we move to a new jurisdiction (especially to a new country), our governance often changes drastically and overnight in a way that can be very favorable to us.
Flag theory is often presented as a late twentieth-century lifestyle strategy: diversify passports, residencies, banks, and assets to reduce exposure to any single state’s policy drift. Yet several of its core intuitions map neatly onto the Austrian tradition, both in its later popularizers and in the real-world choices that economists of the Austrian school of thought made under political stress.
Harry Schultz, who coined the term “flag theory,” framed his thinking in an explicitly Austrian register, crediting Friedrich Hayek as his main economic inspiration and frequently citing Ludwig von Mises and Mises’s American student Hans Sennholz. The same pattern appears among other popularizers of international diversification such as Jerome Tuccille and WG Hill. In other words, the “flags” idea did not arise in a vacuum. It grew naturally from a worldview that treats institutions as constraints to compare, compete, and, when necessary, exit.
This connection becomes especially vivid when we look back to the Austrian school’s founding generation, where theoretical attention to institutions met an unusually concrete awareness of geopolitical rupture. Carl Menger traveled extensively with Crown Prince Rudolf of Habsburg, an experience that invited comparison across jurisdictions and regimes. As the notes record, Menger anticipated a catastrophic European war years before 1914 and positioned accordingly: he shifted wealth into gold and into securities in neutral Sweden. Mises reports that, around 1910, Menger warned European policy would bring “a terrible war” followed by “horrifying revolutions,” and that, in anticipation, one could recommend little besides hoarded gold and, perhaps, Scandinavian securities. Menger acted on this view by placing savings in Swedish papers, effectively combining a hard-asset hedge with exposure to a comparatively safer jurisdiction.
Menger’s student Felix Somary carried this practical sensibility into high finance and became, in these notes, an unusually clear early example of what we would now call a flag-theory practitioner. Somary helped shape Swiss private banking, and he appears here as someone who married early geopolitical diagnosis with operational decisiveness. Immediately after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, he was asked on the phone from Budapest: “Does this mean world war?” Somary’s reply, as he later recalled, was an unambiguous yes, and the message was relayed immediately to business partners in Paris and London. He then described the next step in plain administrative terms: for clients whose wealth he managed, he converted balances and securities into gold and placed that gold in Switzerland and Norway. A few days later, war began. Read as a sequence of actions, this is the “flags” logic in embryo: change the asset (into gold), change the custody location (out of the soon-to-be belligerent sphere), and distribute across relatively safer, neutral settings before constraints tighten.
A further, often overlooked bridge between Austrian economics and flag theory lies with another student of Menger’s who moved from scholarship into statecraft: Richard Schüller. He is considered another of Menger’s favorite students, and pursued a career in diplomacy. His work sharpened Austrian awareness of geopolitics and the strategic value of neutral jurisdictions. He remained in public service and became part of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest (1918) and at Saint-Germain (1919). He then rose to head the Trade and Economic Policy section of the Austrian Foreign Ministry and later served as Austria’s envoy to the League of Nations in Geneva, placing him directly in the institutional machinery that tried to stabilize a shattered Europe. In trade policy, he argued in detail about the costs and benefits of tariffs versus freer trade, and he also worked within League of Nations structures. Schüller’s trajectory highlights that neutrality is not only a private convenience, it is a geopolitical position that can preserve room for maneuver when blocs harden and borders become instruments of coercion.
That line runs straight to Geneva and the institutional ecosystem that, between the wars, became a practical laboratory for internationalism and a refuge for exiled scholars. When Mises left Austria, he did so for neutral Switzerland, taking up a professorship at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva in 1934 and remaining there until 1940. The Institute itself was created in 1927 in the wake of World War I and the League of Nations’ move to Geneva, aiming to improve diplomatic competence and international understanding. It later distinguished itself in the 1930s and World War II by welcoming exiled researchers while maintaining intellectual independence. This “Geneva base” becomes a key link between Austrian economics and flag theory because it embodies the same principle at the level of institutions: a neutral jurisdiction can function as an intellectual and financial safe harbor, a place where cross-border cooperation and analysis can continue when surrounding regimes polarize.
The Institute was shaped by William E. Rappard, a Swiss academic and diplomat who illustrates, almost biographically, the transnational posture that flag theory later systematized. Rappard was born in New York City (April 22, 1883) to Swiss parents; his father worked in the United States as a representative of Swiss industries. Rappard then moved to Switzerland, graduated from Harvard in 1908, and studied at the University of Vienna in 1908–1909. That personal arc, New York, Harvard, Vienna, Geneva, matters here because it reflects the early twentieth-century version of a “portfolio life”: embedded in multiple jurisdictions, literate in multiple intellectual worlds, and positioned to build institutions that outlast any single political swing.
Within that Geneva milieu, Mises and Hayek were not merely “present.” They anchored a research and teaching emphasis that naturally foregrounded the mobility of goods, capital, and people as a civilizational question, not just a technical one. Mises held a chair in international economic relations. Hayek taught at the Geneva Graduate Institute as well, including a summer course in 1937. And the Institute’s later self-description of its mid-century focus explicitly highlights trade and international monetary economics among its core emphases. Put differently (and this is an interpretation rather than a quotation): once you treat economies as interconnected systems, you are inevitably drawn to the question of how quickly flows can be redirected when governments become predatory. That is the analytical backbone of flag theory, expressed decades earlier as scholarship and institutional design.
Even in peacetime, Austrian economists sometimes engaged in what could be called “micro-flagging,” selecting legal environments for specific life decisions. One small but revealing instance of governance-shopping is Hayek teaching at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for a summer to take advantage of Arkansas’s comparatively relaxed divorce laws.
In modern terms, it is the same logic, applied narrowly: find the jurisdiction whose rules fit the problem at hand, then move (even temporarily) to make use of them. Finally, the Austrian story also contains the darker mirror image of voluntary exit: forced exit. Mises, as a Jew in interwar Europe, ultimately had to “vote with his feet” to escape the Nazi threat, reminding us that mobility is sometimes not optimization but survival.
A Russian drone strike hit a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Sunday, killing at least 12 people.
Ukrainian emergency services later reported the death toll had risen to 15 in one of the deadliest single attacks on energy workers since the start of the war.
The attack Sunday came a few hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a new round of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia had been postponed.
A spokesperson for DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy firm, which employed the workers, told Fox News Digital that drones had targeted the bus as it traveled ‘roughly 40 miles from the front line in central and eastern Ukraine.’
The DTEK spokesperson also described the incident as a ‘terrorist attack on civilian infrastructure.’
‘This strike was a targeted terrorist attack against civilians and another crime by Russia against critical infrastructure,’ the spokesperson added.
The bus was transporting miners after the end of their shift when it was hit by a Russian drone, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine also confirmed.
At least seven workers were injured, and a fire sparked by the impact was later extinguished by emergency crews.
‘The epicenter of one of the attacks was a company bus transporting miners from the enterprise after a shift in the Dnipropetrovsk region,’ the company also said in a statement.
Zelenskyy condemned the strike late Sunday, calling it another deliberate attack on civilians.
Earlier in the day, he announced that the next round of trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. would now take place Feb. 4-5 in Abu Dhabi, after originally being expected for Sunday.
‘Ukraine is ready for a substantive discussion, and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,’ Zelenskyy said on X, adding that the delay had been agreed to by all sides.
The delay followed a surprise meeting Saturday in Florida between Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy, and Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s special envoy and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
The talks in Abu Dhabi are now expected to include representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the U.S., according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy warned Russia is stepping up its aerial campaign against civilian and logistical targets.
‘Over the past week, Russia has used more than 980 attack drones, nearly 1,100 guided aerial bombs, and two missiles against Ukraine,’ he wrote on X on Sunday. ‘We are recording Russian attempts to destroy logistics and connectivity between cities and communities.’
In a statement, DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko also explained the bus attack marked the company’s ‘single largest loss [of] life of DTEK employees since Russia’s full-scale invasion.’
‘We can already say with certainty that this was an unprovoked terrorist attack on a purely civilian target, for which there can be no justification,’ Timchenko said.
The attack marked ‘one of the darkest days in our history,’ he added. ‘DTEK teams are working with emergency services on the ground in Dnipropetrovsk region to ensure the injured, and families who have lost loved ones, get all the care and support they need. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten,’ he added.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that the Trump Kennedy Center will close later this year for a two-year period to undergo renovations.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the complex will close on July 4, coinciding with the nation’s 250th anniversary, at which point construction will begin on what he described as a ‘new and spectacular entertainment complex.’
Trump said the decision followed a yearlong review involving contractors, arts experts and other advisers. He added that the temporary closure would allow the renovations to be completed faster and at a higher quality than if construction were carried out while performances continued.
Trump said the approach would be ‘the fastest way’ to elevate the center, adding that the planned grand reopening would surpass previous versions of the venue.
The Trump Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Trump said the funds to carry out the renovation were already in place, though he did not provide an estimated cost or explain whether the project would be financed through federal funding, private contributions, or a combination of both.
The Trump Kennedy Center hosts hundreds of performances each year and is home to several resident companies. It was not immediately clear whether those events would be postponed or moved to other venues.
Since his return to office, Trump has undertaken a series of changes aimed at reshaping the look and feel of the White House and other iconic Washington landmarks.
In October, Trump unveiled a new monument dubbed the ‘Arc de Trump,’ which is planned to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary next year.
He has previously said that the large arch, a near twin of Paris’s iconic Arc de Triomphe, will welcome visitors crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge from Arlington National Cemetery into the heart of the nation’s capital.
Trump’s taste for opulence is evident in the Oval Office, where gold accents now line the ceiling and doorway trim, reflecting his personal style.
Beyond the Oval Office, the administration has unveiled the ‘Presidential Walk of Fame,’ a series of portraits of past presidents displayed along the West Wing colonnade.
Among the largest projects underway is a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom designed to accommodate roughly 650 seated guests.
The administration has said the sprawling ballroom will adhere to the classical architectural style of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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A pair of Senate Republicans are pushing their House counterparts to reject the Trump-backed shutdown deal unless it includes Homeland Security funding and election integrity legislation.
Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, are calling on House Republicans to push back against the Senate-passed funding package, which includes bills to fund five agencies, including the Pentagon, as a partial government shutdown continues.
They contended that the package needs to be retooled, and must include a modified version of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act, dubbed the SAVE America Act, and the Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, which was stripped out after Senate Democrats threatened to blow up the government funding process.
Doing so could extend what was expected to be a short-term shutdown.
Scott said congressional Democrats would ‘NEVER fund DHS’ and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He voted against the package twice, arguing that the spending levels would further bloat the nation’s eye-popping $38 trillion national debt, and that the billions in earmarks betrayed Republicans’ previous vows of fiscal restraint.
‘If House Republicans don’t put the DHS bill back in, add the SAVE America Act and remove the wasteful earmarks, Democrats win,’ Scott said. ‘We must protect our homeland, secure our elections and end the reckless spending NOW!’
Lee also rejected the package in the Senate because of earmarks. He also agreed with Scott, and pushed for his SAVE America Act, which he introduced alongside Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, to be included.
‘To my friends in the House GOP: Please put DHS funding back in, then add the SAVE America Act,’ Lee wrote on X.
The updated version of the SAVE Act would require that people present photo identification before voting, states obtain proof of citizenship in-person when people register to vote and remove noncitizens from voter rolls.
But their demands run counter to the desire of President Donald Trump, who brokered a truce with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to strip the DHS bill following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti during an immigration operation in Minneapolis in order to ram the funding package through the Senate.
And any changes to the deal, like including the SAVE America Act or adding the DHS bill, would send the package back to the Senate, where Schumer and his caucus would likely reject it.
That would create a back-and-forth between the chambers that would further prolong what was meant to be a temporary shutdown.
Their demands also place House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a precarious position, given that several House Republicans want to extract concessions from congressional Democrats. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is already leading a charge to include the SAVE Act in the funding package.
Johnson will have to shore up any resistance among his conference, given that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., made clear to the speaker that any attempt to fast-track the legislation on Monday, when the House returns, would fail.
President Donald Trump has threatened legal action against author Michael Wolff and the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, insisting a newly released trove of Epstein-related files clears him of wrongdoing.
Trump was aboard Air Force One during a flight to Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday when he responded to a reporter’s question about the more than 3 million Epstein-related records and personal emails that the Justice Department released Friday.
‘It looked like this guy, Wolff, was a writer, was conspiring with Epstein to do harm to me,’ Trump said. ‘I didn’t see it myself, but I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left, that Wolff, who’s a third-rate writer, was conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to hurt me, politically or otherwise, and that came through loud and clear.’
Trump said there was a high likelihood that he would sue Wolff and the Epstein estate ‘because he was conspiring with Wolff to do harm to me politically. That’s not a friend.’
In one March 2016 email between Epstein and Wolff that Fox News Digital reviewed, Wolff is encouraging Epstein to come up with an ‘immediate counter narrative’ to James Patterson’s book about him, ‘Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy.’
‘You do need an immediate counter narrative to the book,’ Wolff writes. ‘I believe Trump offers an ideal opportunity. It’s a chance to make the story about something other than you, while, at the same time, letting you frame your own story.’
‘Also, becoming anti-Trump gives you a certain political cover which you decidedly don’t have now,’ Wolff continues.
In a February 2016 email previously released, Wolff had suggested to Epstein that the disgraced financier is the ‘bullet’ that could end Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Regarding the latest Epstein document dump, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Digital on Friday that ‘in none of these communications, even when doing his best to disparage President Trump, did Epstein suggest President Trump had done anything criminal or had any inappropriate contact with any of his victims.’
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
Tax season already brings stress. In 2026, it brings added confusion. Changes to tax filing programs and the discontinuation of the free government-run filing system have left many taxpayers unsure about what is legitimate. That uncertainty has created an opening for scammers who move quickly when people hesitate.
‘Every tax season we see scammers ramp up their activity, and with likely confusion now that the free government-run filing system is discontinued, we’re sure scammers will take advantage,’ said Lynette Owens, vice president of consumer marketing and education at Trend Micro.
In past years, scammers have leaned heavily on impersonation. Fake IRS emails promising refunds, text messages claiming accounts have been flagged under new rules and fraudulent tax help offers that promise faster returns continue to circulate, Owens said. As February begins, many taxpayers feel pressure to file quickly. That urgency creates the perfect conditions for fraud.
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Uncertainty is one of the most effective tools scammers have. When taxpayers are unsure how filing rules work or whether a message is legitimate, criminals step in with communications designed to sound official and helpful. The goal is not clarity. It is speed.
‘Scammers aim to create a heightened sense of anxiety among the people they are targeting,’ Owens said. ‘When taxpayers don’t feel confident about what’s real, whether it’s new filing options, eligibility rules or program updates, criminals step in with messages that sound official and helpful.’ They often pose as the IRS, a tax prep service, or even government support. Once trust is established, the message quickly turns transactional, asking for clicks, personal data or payments.
While the delivery methods change, the core message rarely does. Something is wrong, and it must be fixed immediately.
‘The most common tactic we’re seeing is fake refund or account alert messages that claim something is wrong and demand immediate action,’ Owens said. Other scams go a step further. Some direct victims to fake IRS login pages designed to steal credentials.
Others promote fraudulent tax assistance, presenting themselves as government-backed or low-cost help in order to collect personal and financial information. These scams arrive by email, text message, phone calls and fake websites. Many are polished enough to appear legitimate at first glance.
Language plays a central role in tax scams. Phrases such as new rules or urgent account issues are designed to trigger panic before logic has a chance to catch up. They suggest the recipient has missed something important or risks losing money.
‘Those phrases work because they can trigger panic and urgency, and people are more likely to react emotionally than logically,’ Owens said. ‘New rules suggest you may have missed something important, and an urgent account issue creates fear of penalties, delays or losing a refund.’
The safest response is to pause. Do not click links, reply to messages or call phone numbers included in the alert. Instead, go directly to a trusted source like IRS.gov using your own browser.
Many tax scams follow a familiar structure. A common example reads: ‘IRS Notice: Your tax refund is on hold due to a filing discrepancy under updated 2026 rules. Verify your identity now to avoid delays.’
At first glance, messages like this may appear credible. They often include official-looking logos, reference numbers and links that resemble real government pages.
‘It may include a convincing IRS-style logo, a case number and a link that looks legitimate at a glance,’ Owens said. ‘But the red flags are usually the same.’ The message pressures immediate action, directs users to non-government websites, and requests sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, bank details or login credentials.
The damage rarely ends with a single click.
‘The most serious consequences are identity theft and financial loss,’ Owens said. ‘Once scammers have personal information, they can file fraudulent tax returns, steal refunds, open credit accounts and access bank funds.’
Victims often spend months working to recover lost money, repair credit damage and restore their identities.
Despite repeated warnings, many people still believe the IRS might email or text them.
‘A legitimate tax service or the IRS won’t reach out unexpectedly by email, text or social media, and they won’t pressure you to act immediately,’ Owens said.
Scam messages often share the same warning signs. They sound urgent, include links or attachments and ask for sensitive information right away. If a message creates panic or demands fast action, that alone is reason to be skeptical. The IRS primarily communicates by official mail. Unexpected digital contact should always raise concern.
Tax scams continue to grow more sophisticated each year.
‘Taxpayers should watch for scams that feel more real than ever,’ Owens said. ‘That includes highly polished phishing emails, refund texts designed for quick mobile clicks, fake tax help ads and cloned websites that mimic real IRS or tax prep portals.’
The biggest mistake people still make is treating an unexpected tax message like an emergency.
‘In tax season, speed is the scammer’s advantage,’ Owens said. ‘Taking 30 seconds to double-check the source can prevent months of financial and identity damage.’
If someone realizes too late that a message was fraudulent, fast action can limit the damage.
‘First, stop engaging immediately,’ Owens said. ‘Don’t click links, download attachments or reply.’
Next, report the incident. Forward phishing emails to phishing@irs.gov and file a report at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
After that, monitor financial accounts closely, change passwords and consider placing a fraud alert or credit freeze if necessary.
To learn more about how to do this, go to Cyberguy.com and search ‘How to freeze your credit.’
Scammers count on rushed decisions. The good news is that a few smart habits can dramatically lower your risk.
Urgency is the scammer’s favorite tool. Messages that demand immediate action aim to short-circuit your judgment.
‘Scammers rely on fear, urgency or false promises, especially during tax season,’ Owens said. ‘It’s important to slow down, verify information through official channels, and use trusted security tools.’ If a message pressures you to act fast, stop. Take a breath before doing anything else.
Scam messages often reference new rules, updated policies or eligibility changes. That language sounds credible when filing programs shift. Always confirm changes by typing IRS.gov directly into your browser or signing in to your trusted tax provider account. Never rely on links or phone numbers included in a message.
Tax portals hold valuable personal and financial data. Weak passwords make them easy targets. Use strong and unique passwords for every tax-related account. A password manager can help generate and store secure credentials without relying on memory.
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Scammers know refunds motivate quick action. Messages claiming your refund is waiting, delayed or at risk often signal fraud. Be cautious of promises like faster refunds, guaranteed results or special access to government-backed assistance. Legitimate services do not operate that way.
Clicking a single link can expose login credentials or install malware. Do not click on links in unexpected tax messages. Also, use strong antivirus software to help block malicious sites and detect threats before damage occurs.
The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe.
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Personal data fuels tax scams. The more information criminals can find online, the easier impersonation becomes. Using a data removal service can help limit exposed personal details across data broker sites. Less data means fewer opportunities for scammers to exploit your identity.
While no service can guarantee the complete removal of your data from the internet, a data removal service is really a smart choice. They aren’t cheap, and neither is your privacy. These services do all the work for you by actively monitoring and systematically erasing your personal information from hundreds of websites. It’s what gives me peace of mind and has proven to be the most effective way to erase your personal data from the internet. By limiting the information available, you reduce the risk of scammers cross-referencing data from breaches with information they might find on the dark web, making it harder for them to target you.
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Tax season pressure makes even cautious people vulnerable. In 2026, filing confusion adds fuel to the fire. Scammers know this and design messages to look official, urgent and helpful. Pausing, verifying and trusting official sources remains the strongest defense. When something feels rushed, it is usually for a reason.
Have you received a suspicious IRS message this tax season, and what made you question whether it was real? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
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