 internal revenues of the IRS tax news. Knowing how the IRS contacts taxpayers can help protect people from scammers. Yeah, that's right. Because the IRS don't need scams to take your money, they'll just send you a letter informing you of the money they've declared theirs now. And if you don't want to pay right away, that's okay, says the IRS will wait patiently as we tack copious amounts of penalties and interest onto your bill, only taking actual action at the point we think your tax has outpaced your current pocketbook and future earning potential. Wow, maybe I should have just paid the scammers. But first, and attempt at a joke. At the last press conference, President Biden said, No wonder the economy's so bad. No wonder. No. At the press asking, you mean you actually recognize the myriad missteps you've taken with regards to the economy? Biden responding, No. I said, No wonder the economy's so bad. Meaning you're not allowed to wonder why the economy's so bad. I actually never knew presidents could do that kind of thing before until I learned it from my good buddy, the president of China. Apparently presidents can do all kinds of stuff I never knew about. I can give you stuff, all kinds of stuff. I'm currently drafting an executive order to put it into law because I have the power of the pen, you know. Alright, power of the pen. Hey, thanks, James. And it's more powerful than the sword. You just need to know how to use it. Holding the pen in the air and proclaiming, I have the power of a numbskull. And I'm going to write with my powerful pen. Thou shalt not wonder about the economy. Thou shalt not. Or thou shalt be smoten by the pen's power, may it be. It's a magic pen. I've been smelling it for the last three days and it's really opened my mind, man. Did you eat a lot of paint chips when you were a kid? Why? The bottom line is, if you're wondering about stuff, stop. Because there's no wondering about stuff loud around here. And not allowed, not allowed. There's no wondering about stuff loud around here. And if you have a wondering problem, we'll provide you with one of these nice pens that my kind and enduring vice president gave me. Which you can sniff for a few days. IRS tax tip 2022-114 July 27, 2022. Scammers often post as the IRS to steal taxpayer personal information. So obviously the scammers know how intimidating the IRS can be. It's kind of like the booger man coming to like steal your boogers or something. So they basically can impersonate the IRS oftentimes. They may reach out through fraudulent phone calls, emails, texts, or social media messages. Usually they'll have a sense of kind of emergency in them or basically a threat in them. And note that the IRS typically doesn't work that way. Of course, the IRS is a slow moving bureaucratic entity. So they will typically contact using the snail mail, wanting a reply not next day, not immediately typically, but within the next 30 days, for example. And usually by the time they take action, we're well aware of the action that's going to be taking because they're going to be doing that slow motion or slow moving process. And of course, as that happens, they will be tacking on the penalties and interests, which is something that is bad, something that can cause harm. But it's not the kind of things that you'll typically see in a threatening type of email, which would be I'm going to take action, some other kind of actual physical action, show up to your house or something like that that you might see in some of the scamming type of messages. So it's important for taxpayers to understand how the IRS contacts people so they don't fall victim to identity thieves, right? We only want to fall victim. The IRS is enough to be falling victim to. We don't need to be falling victim to identity thieves as well. Anyways, generally the IRS will mail a notice or letter to the taxpayers first. Taxpayers can search IRS notices by visiting, understanding your IRS tax notice or letter. So you can take a look at your account online, which many people might not have signed up to these days. But I think more and more the IRS is getting into the more modern era at this time and you're going to be wanting to connect to your account online. Because that's where you can see these things like these notices and whatnot. And if they send out any other stimulus payments or if they send out advanced child tax credits or stuff like that, you can look it up online as well so you might want to set up your account if you haven't done so. However, not all IRS notices are searchable on the site. So that would be understanding your IRS notice. Be aware that fraudsters sometimes claim they already notified the taxpayer by mail or reference an IRS notice to make their scam seem legitimate. So notice the standard letters that go out from the IRS. You might be able to look up the standard kind of letters that have gone out. You might be able to look up letters that have been actually sent to you. And then some scammers might be referring to a letter which is a legitimate standard letter number in an attempt to look more truthful because those are actual letters. So they're going to put a component of truth in their lie to make the lie more believable. And so you've got to be kind of careful on that. What you typically would want to do is go to the IRS, the source, instead of responding to the email which is suspicious. So if you think it might be a legitimate, then you typically would want to go to the source. Basically your account online, for example, the IRS website itself, not from a link but directly, and then do your research from there, which is more time consuming to do, but a safer thing to do. Taxpayers may check their secured online account or contact the IRS to confirm legitimacy of a notice. So that's typically what you want to do. You want to go to the source itself separate from the email. Debt relief firms often send unsolicited tax debt relief offers through the mail. So the IRS may send taxpayers a notice about filing past due tax returns. They should send their past due return to the address provided in the notice. Taxpayers can use the prior year form, instructions and publications on irs.gov to file past due returns or they can work with a tax professional. After mailing a notice or letter, the IRS may call a taxpayer. IRS revenue agents or tax compliance officers may call a taxpayer or tax professional after mailing a notice to confirm an appointment or to discuss items for a scheduled audit. The IRS encourages taxpayers to review how to know it's really the IRS calling or knocking on your door collection. So you might want to check that out and just to be able to have a peace of mind that the person you're contacting or talking with is or is not from the IRS. So the IRS does not leave preordered urgent or threatening messages. So anytime a message and this is usually what happens with a scamming message, they're going to say, Hey, there's this new action that happened or we just found this thing or you got your stimulus payment was when that was going through and we you've got to act now immediately. So most scams are going to have some kind of element of some truth to it, right? But then it's going to be a scam and then they're going to have some sense of urgency. You have to act now, just like a sale type of offer. There's a limited time offer or in this case, it's a threat. The IRS is going to take action in some way. If you don't do something that's not generally how the IRS works, they don't threaten on the short term because they have all the time in the world, right? They're just going to keep tacking on penalties and interest and you're just going to keep going more money. That's usually what many get. So in many phone scams, victims are told if they do not call back, a warrant will be issued for their arrest. So again, that's clearly a pretty blatant threatening scary thing. So private debt collectors contracted by the IRS can call taxpayers to collect certain outstanding inactive tax liabilities, but only after the taxpayer and their representative have received a written notice. Private debt collection shouldn't be confused with debt relief firms who will call, send lien notices or email taxpayers with debt relief offers. The IRS doesn't initiate contact with taxpayers by email or request personal financial information. Taxpayers shouldn't reply to phishing emails from someone who claims to be from the IRS. So any email that says, hey, I'm an IRS, I'm the IRS, give me information for some reason or another that's personal information, social security number and so on and so forth. IRS doesn't generally do that because the email address could be spoofed or fake. So notice that they're getting good these days at actually making email addresses that look legitimate, like they're from the IRS or a phone call. You can get, you might get emails, I've gotten emails sometimes that have one of my email addresses and they're like, look, I've hacked into your own email address and, you know, so we're going to terrorize you somehow or, you know, they're spoofing the email or it called you with your own phone number or something like that and trying to use that in some kind of scam. So beware of that. So emails from IRS employees will end in IRS.gov. The IRS doesn't send text messages or contact people through social media. So they're not going to give you a social face, a social face message or like a tweet. So other than IRS secure access, the IRS does not use text messages to discuss personal tax issues such as those involving bills or refunds. The IRS also will not send taxpayers messages via social media platforms. That'd be funny if they did that, but no, the IRS doesn't do that. They don't send you face messages. They're like, hey, you didn't pay your tax bill. I sent you a Twitter, I sent you a face message. You didn't respond. Just like, okay, I don't, I don't respond to those. Scammers may text a taxpayer with a phony message about COVID-19 or stimulus payments. So the stimulus payments, again, that was a boon for the, for the scammers. And so they may still be on that. These messages often contain bogus links claiming to be IRS website or other online tools. Fraudsters also will impersonate legitimate government agents and agencies on social media and try to initiate contact with taxpayers. IRS revenue offers and agents may make in-person visits. IRS revenue offices or agents routinely make unannounced visits to taxpayers' homes or place of business to discuss taxes owed delinquent tax returns or a business falling behind on payroll tax deposits. So IRS revenue officers will request payments of taxes owed by the taxpayer. However, taxpayers should remember that payment will never be requested to a source other than the U.S. Treasury. So if they say, okay, okay, you're like kind of convinced. Like, all right, maybe this is legitimate and they need me to pay them. And then they're like, so we would like you to pay us by, by signing up to this gift card. We want you to pay us with a gift card. The IRS wants me to pay them with a gift card. No, no, and that's when you draw. I'm drawing the line right here. I was about to give you my life savings, but you know, with a gift card, I don't think so. So in any case, when visited by someone from the IRS, taxpayers should always ask for credentials. IRS representatives can always provide two forms of official credentials, a pocket commission and a personal identification verification credential. So more information can be found at the links below. Secure tax payment options, consumer alerts, report fishing and online schemes. There's links to that stuff here, links to all the stuff we talked about. And there'll be a link to this in the description.