My first scam shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was

"I am calling from the Australian Taxation Office," the voice advised evenly and somberly.

The call came in about lunch-time today.

"I am calling about the missed payments you have made on your income tax debts to the ATO."

Gulp. Just because I didn't know anything about a tax debt didn't mean I didn't have one.

Perhaps it was something I had overlooked?

My tax agent did successfully claim a TV aerial under "urgent communications" a decade or more ago, I always felt that hundred-or-so dollars was a bit dodgy.

Then I wondered whether it was a joke, a family member works with the ATO, maybe they were bored at work.

It took a few seconds of mild panic but then I realised I was being scammed, my first.

Or at least someone was trying to scam me.

Some phone numbers seem to get a lot of crank calls, my wife very often gets unsolicited calls in the evening but me, touch wood, hardly ever.

But there was nothing special about me today.

I was just one of hundreds who received calls today from that deep, rich voice pretending to be from the ATO.

Sometimes the caller tells the victim that a warrant has been issued for their arrest - unless they purchase thousands of dollars in Apple iTunes vouchers, and then relay the cards' redemption codes to the fraudsters.

I'm too tight to do that, but my heart would have been in my mouth.

Last year the ATO received 114,625 reports of the ATO impersonation scam with over $2.8 million in reported losses.

That's about half the population of the NT, and now I've joined them.

I didn't pay up, but lots have.

That's why they were keep doing it.

Money for nothing.

Australians lost nearly half a billion dollars to scammers in 2018, but that figure is the official count, lots would have been too embarrassed to say anything.

According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's latest 'Targeting Scams' report, people were cheated out of (at least) $489 million last year - a 44 per cent jump on the $340 million reported in 2017.

I figured out I was being scammed about half-way in, listened for a while, and then hung up.

Robo-calls, from international call centres, re-routed in a way to make it look like a local call.

It was easier to pick when you had won a gazillion dollars from an Ethiopian lottery, or an inheritance from an unknown Scottish royal, these are a lot more sophisticated.

The ACCC encourages people to contact Scamwatch to report all scams.