Kim Tracey said she received two dodgy calls from someone pretending to be the Australian Tax Office (ATO) on Monday.

She said it was a pre-recorded message with a woman’s voice telling her that she owed the tax office money.

The voice told her to call a phone number and pay money or else she would be put in jail.

Ms Tracey said while she knew straight away it was a scam, she was concerned for others who may not realise, such as the elderly.

“I didn’t take any notice to it,” Ms Tracey said. “But I’d hate to see anyone else get caught.”

“People should be made aware that there are scams out there.”

“They’re making our area more vulnerable.”

The ATO said tax-time was always a prime period for these types of calls, due to the large number of people lodging their returns and receiving refunds.

Assistant Commissioner Graham Whyte said that while most people were able to identify scams, it was important to remain alert during tax time.

“Although the ATO makes thousands of outbound calls to taxpayers a week, there are some key differences between a legitimate call from the ATO and a call from a potential scammer,” he said.

Mr Whyte said the tax office would never cold call citizens about a debt or threaten jail or arrest.

Scams reported to the tax office rose by more than 90 per cent from 2014 to 2015.

From January to May this year, the ATO received more than 40,500 phone scam reports. Of these, 226 Australians handed over $1.2 million to fraudsters and over 1900 gave out some form of personal information, including tax file numbers.

Central Hunter crime manager Detective Inspector Mitch Dubojski said he had not received any calls about the problem this tax time.

However he encouraged people to report these kinds of incidents to the tax office before calling police.

If you think you have been contacted by a fraudster, contact the tax office on 1800 008 540.