Inland Revenue is warning customers to be on guard against a new and convincing email scam that surfaced over the weekend.

The e-mail offers tax refunds and Inland Revenue spokesperson Sharon Thompson says it appears to be a very wide spread scam.

'We've received more than 900 reports over the weekend. It looks like the real thing but has some tell-tale mistakes that people can use to tell it's a scam,” says Sharon.

'Embedded links can look quite convincing at first glance as ‘ird.govt.nz' can be included within the address. But if you hover over those links, you'll see Inland Revenue is not the destination.

'In this particular scam, there is also no personalised greeting and what's listed as a person's IRD number is a wrong number.

'Importantly, this scam also includes a dollar amount for the bogus refund. Inland Revenue does not include dollar amounts in refund emails.”

Inland Revenue is in the process of having this taken down but the sites can jump back up again.

If you receive a scam email you can forward the email on to phishing@ird.govt.nz.