 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news! Everyone should know the facts about how the IRS communicates with tax payers. I don't know, shouldn't we hear about the IRS's communication skills from like a neutral third party or something? I mean, the IRS telling us about their communication skills is kind of like listening to just one side of a divorce hearing. It's like, okay, spouse IRS, please explain with the divorce settlement and the balance your communication skills with your ex spouse, the taxpayer. And they're like, oh, I was an excellent communicator, your honor. I always told my ex spouse taxpayer exactly how much money I needed to buy whatever frivolous stuff I felt like at the time. Sometimes I even told the taxpayer what I planned to spend the money on. I mean, what more do you want? Like for example, just last month I told taxpayer I needed money to buy a $10,000 hammer and a $300,000 whip. Not for me, mind you, for the noble cause of reducing inflation. What did I get for my transparency, resistance and complaining? Which is why, of course, I needed the whip in the first place. And reducing inflation, of course. That's the main goal that I was going for. In any case, given my excellent communication skills, your honor, and my spouse's clear lack thereof, I would like to claim the bank accounts house and the dog and the court's lack. I don't know, maybe we should hear from the other spouse or like a third party or something. Nah, just give the IRS spouse the bank accounts house and the dog. Dang, government employees use COVID as an excuse to do whatever they want, I swear. Friends, your reason to thank for that. So that's it then. That's the secret. I spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum. Welcome to the Caribbean now. Well the COVID party is over, people. Make good the clear for what? You have to take it to shore. First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement. I must do nothing. I mean, I don't need COVID relief. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply. And you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you call guideline and actual rules. I need some kind of child relief by sending these dang kids back to school for good this time. They have served the dark will of Persian kings for 500 years. I mean, these poor kids lost the capacity to even count to 10 at this point. We already have a backup plan. We can just wait for another code to go red. And I for one have high expectations of our public school system. And when Phoenix performs another murder death kill, we'll know exactly where to pounce. Like, I expect kids to be able to count at least as high as the number of digits they have, including their feet. That's 20 people. And for dudes, possibly 21. Great plan. Thank you. That way, they can at least participate in playing Blackjack. The world you live in is just sugar coating topping. There is another world beneath it. Oh my goodness, little Johnny's got Blackjack. How do you know? Well, after taking off his shoes to count his toes, he pulled down his pants pointed to his crotch and excitedly yelled 21. Nothing to look at. Get back to work, everyone. Don't act like you're not impressed. But wait, then little Jane got excited after taking off her shoes to count her toes. Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. She jumped up pointed to her crotch, but then sadly proclaimed only 19. You jumped up a notch. Yeah, didn't it? However, it turned out little Johnny actually had 23 and therefore busted. I know it's difficult for you, but please stay here and try not to do anything stupid. Little Johnny protested, proclaiming numbers stop at 21. All right, hold on. I try and find my balls for God's sakes. One, two and three. Okay, I'm okay. And my 21st digit dang it. Enter Rome like a conquering hero. What does it come to? My teacher told me so just before she went on COVID relief permanently. Give him time. I think he could do very well. IRS tax tip 2022-173 November 10th, 2022. Knowledge as a taxpayer's first line of defense against scammers who pretend to be from the IRS with the goal of stealing personal information. So obviously impersonating the IRS has been a scamming strategy for many years, but possibly has increased in the last few years due to changes in the tax law, changes to like refundable credits and that kind of thing. When you have a moving landscape that often causes confusion, which often leads to more scammers running more scams. Now, typically if they're going to be impersonating the IRS, why would they do that? Generally because the IRS can add a level kind of of intimidation to a scam, which is often going to be a component of many of these types of scams, which would include a kind of intimidation factor as well as a time constraint kind of situation and the act now type of thing. When you see those combo of things happening, you've got your fear kind of heightened due to whatever the scammers are doing that hopefully is as a sign to say, hey wait a second, maybe this is a scammer trying to take my money or something. So here are some facts about the IRS communicates with tax payers. The IRS doesn't normally initiate contact with taxpayers by email. So usually the IRS is still leaning towards the snail mail. It's going to be interesting looking going forward because you would think that they would want to start to lean into some of these more electronic communications, especially if they get their site up and running and if they can get more people on the actual website in their account because you would think that would be more efficient. But at this point in time, it's kind of nice on the other side to be able to say, well if I'm getting emails that's not likely from the IRS because they usually still send stuff through the mail. So do not reply to an email from someone who claims to be from the IRS because the IRS email address could be spoofed or fake. So clearly if you get something from the IRS, even if you suspect it is them, you probably don't want to respond directly to the mail or go to any links on it, but rather go to the IRS website itself, log into your account possibly and see if there's any activity from that side of things. So email from IRS employees will end in irs.gov. So the agency does not send text messages. Notice that even if it says irs.gov, that's a harder email to spoof, but they can still spoof the email. So even if you see something that looks like a legitimate email, I mean, I've gotten emails these days that try to say, well, we spoofed like your own email or something like that. And look, and then they argue that again, they try to scare you and then they try to send them Bitcoin or something. I don't know, or else they're going to blackmail you. I don't know. I hate this whole blackmail thing. So what you do is go to the IRS website directly and note that they can generally spoof emails and phone numbers these days. So the agency does not send text messages or contact people through social media, so they're not going to send you a tweet typically. So unless they get a new deal with Elon Musk over there or something, they're not going to be doing stuff with the tweets. And I don't think Musk is going to do that given he's trying to go on the free speech thing. So fraudsters will impersonate legitimate government agents and agencies on social media and try to initiate contact with taxpayers. So if the IRS face messages you on the face message, that doesn't seem legitimate. When the IRS needs to contact a taxpayer, the first contact is normally by letter delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. So the snail mail, that's the way they do things. Debt relief firms send unsolicited tax debt relief offers through the mail. Fraudsters will often claim they already notified the taxpayer by U.S. mail. So again, the IRS will basically say, I mean, the fraudsters will say, you already got a letter. We sent out a letter in the past and that's their work around to the fact that the IRS will typically contact you by mail. But again, now you got to be suspicious of that lie and say, well, they're probably lying about that. So maybe they didn't get a letter. Maybe I'm just going to contact the IRS directly and then you hang up on them. So even though that's rude, but you got to do it. Depending on the situation, IRS employees may first call or visit with a taxpayer. In some instances, the IRS sends a letter or written notice to taxpayer in advance, but not always. Taxpayers can search IRS notices by visiting, understanding your IRS notice or letter. So if you do get a letter and you're trying to think about what kind of letter this is, the IRS has kind of standardizations of their letters. You can check this link out. However, not all IRS notices are searchable on this site. And just because someone references an IRS notice in email phone call text or social media does not mean the request is legitimate. So if you if you look up the letter and say, hey, this is a legit. This is an actual kind of letter of the type of letter the IRS sends out. That's not verification necessarily that the letter that you got is legitimate. It's just that they have impersonated a pretty legitimate looking letter in that case. Normally you might be able to go to your actual account and then check check from there possibly IRS revenue agents or tax compliance officers may call a taxpayer. Tax professional after mailing a notice to confirm an appointment or to discuss items for a scheduled audit. The IRS encourages taxpayer to review how to how to know it's really the IRS calling or knocking on your door collection. So you can check you can link on that. So again, the IRS doesn't normally call but they might call on a follow up kind of thing or an audit kind of situation in certain circumstances. So private debt collectors can call taxpayers for the collection of certain outstanding inactive tax liabilities but only after the taxpayer and the representative have received written notice. So the IRS like other businesses if they have outstanding debts that they themselves aren't able to collect may then use outside services collection agencies to help to collect on the debt which confuses things a little bit. But it should be still fairly clear. So private debt collection should not be confused with debt relief firms who will call send lien notices via US mail or email taxpayers with debt relief offers. Taxpayers should contact the IRS regarding filling back tax properly. So IRS revenue officers and agents routinely make unannounced visits to a taxpayers home or place a business to discuss taxes owed delinquent tax returns or a business falling behind on payroll tax deposits. So payroll is a particularly messy kind of area because the IRS will possibly say that you not only didn't pay your taxes in that case but you had withholdings which you required to do. And then if you didn't pay the withholdings that becomes another issue because now now you didn't pay taxes not your taxes but also the employees taxes which in theory you withheld possibly didn't you know you just didn't have the money. Most likely if you're if your business is going insolvent but you want to be quite careful of the payroll taxes because there's another level of complexity with those. So IRS revenue officers will request payment of taxes owed by the taxpayer. However, taxpayers should remember that payment will never be requested to a source other than the US Treasury. So the weird thing about some of these scams is that the ones that are on the lower end threshold try to end the scam by saying you have to send us money after they scared the crap out of you. And you're like OK I'll give you money and then and then they want it with a gift card or something because it's not traceable. And that of course you would think would lead you to say well a gift card really IRS you want a gift card that doesn't make any sense. So you might have more sophisticated kind of payment structures or whatever. But because everything is automated these days that that can make it easier for to make payments. But it often also makes an audit trail. And so if someone wants something like bit like something that's not traceable you would think OK that's weird. Why. And so then the IRS doesn't act like that when visits when visited by someone from the IRS the taxpayers should always ask for credentials. So let me see your criticism just like they do in the movies. And then IRS representatives can always provide two forms of official credentials a pocket commission and a personal identification verification credential except in the movies. It's usually like an FBI or something IRS not so much but they did get Al Capone. So you know the accountants are doing their thing over there. More information is at the links secure tax payment options. There's a link to that here consumer alerts link to that here report fishing online scams. There's links to that stuff here and there's links to everything I said there was a link to. There'll be a link to this in the description.