 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news! Before calling the IRS, people should know what info they'll need to verify their identity. Oh come on, everybody knows what they need. The IRS asks for the same stuff that any identity thief asks for. And for the same reasons. They want your money. But first an attempt at a joke. With regards to the administration's empty promises about climate change. No more empty promises. I don't give a rat's ass. I don't give a rat's ass. Why would I? We're going into a recession. And the most valuable part of a rat is the rat's ass. I'm not giving it to you. It's the principal ingredient, my rat burgers. Look that authenticity is the main ingredient to dreams. And you're gonna have to give me a lot more than empty promises about climate change if you want one of my rat burgers. This is a rat burger. Rat burgers primarily made from rat's ass. Not bad. Matter of fact, it's the best burger I've had in years. IRS tax tip 2022-115, July 28, 2022. When taxpayers have a question, their first stop should be irs.gov, irs.gov, irs.gov. V for victory over tax questions. In recent years, the IRS has been more slow than usual to getting back to all their phone calls. Although their phone answering machine has recently added at least two new bot options to the selections, which may help. But you might want to try to get your information first by going to the IRS website. So the Let Us Help You page, there's a link to that here, is a great way to get answers to tax questions fast, which might not be the same for calling them. So if you could find it there, that might be the way to go. People who call the IRS for additional help will need to have information available to verify their identity. This is part of the agency's ongoing efforts to keep taxpayers' data secure from identity thieves. IRS representative only discussed personal information with the taxpayer or someone. The taxpayer authorizes to speak on their behalf to ensure they don't have to call back. Taxpayers should have the following information ready. So you're going to call the IRS, you've got your coffee, you've got like three meals ready so that you can wait all day long. And if they do answer, then you can have them actually talk to you instead of saying, we can't verify your identity, call back at a later time or possibly better yet. Check our website, which is available 24-7. So first, we've got the social security number and birth dates for those who were included in the tax return. So you probably know your own birth date and social security number. But the other people on there like those pesky kids, they might ask for those too. And it gets kind of embarrassing when you forget all that stuff. So I don't know when the kid was birthday. I don't know, it's been around for a while, that kid. So an individual taxpayer identification number, there's a link to that here. Letter if the taxpayer has an I-10 instead of an SSN, social security number. Their filing status, single head of household, married filing joint, married filing separate or qualified widow, widower with a dependent child. So you probably want the actual tax return or a copy of it in front of you. And it should tell you right at the top of it how you filed. There was a single head of household, married filing joint, so and so on. The prior year tax return, phone representatives may need to verify taxpayer identity with information from the return before answering certain questions. So they might actually ask you about line numbers on the tax return, like your AGI, adjusted gross income and so on. So you need the actual tax return. That's probably the most difficult one that remember in the kid's birthdays and whatnot. So you want to have that in front of you, probably a copy of the tax return in question. IRS letters or notices received by the taxpayer. So if you're like the IRS sent me a notice, they should be able to look it up on their side and whatnot. But if you can reference the notice and give the number of the notice, that's another further verification that the IRS will usually be able to proceed with if they're so kind to do so. So by law, IRS representatives will only speak with the taxpayer or to the taxpayer's legal, legally designated representative. So if you don't have the time, if you don't have three meals in a whole day to, you know, sit on hold and, you know, wait with all this information for the IRS, then you might be able to hire someone else to do it because you can, you can get like a power of attorney. But note, if they're going to take actual action, make decisions on your behalf, then you're going to need like a power of attorney kind of situation for them to do that. And then they could sit on hold all day or maybe they know how to use the website better or something like that. And they could do something, they could do it more quickly than your, they might have another number that they could call that might be a little bit more, little bit faster than the 800 line, if that's all you got. So in any case, anyone calling about someone else's account should be prepared to verify their identity and provide information about the person they are representing. So if you are representing someone else with like a power of attorney, you're going to need a bunch of information too or else the IRS, they're not going to talk to you. You're going to waste all your time on hold even if you do have a better number to call than the 800 number. So verbal or written author, authorization from the taxpayer to discuss their account, the ability to verify the taxpayer's name, social security or ITEN, tax period and tax forms filed, prepare a tax identification number or PIN, if a third party designee, one of these forms, which is current, completed and signed, that's the form 8821, Tax Information Authorization or the form 2848, the good old power of attorney, a declaration of representative. It should say declaration of representation, right? Because that just sounds cooler. But no, declaration of representative. So there's links to those items here. You can look into those forms and more depth and see what it takes to be able to represent someone and whatnot or what it takes to get someone to represent you possibly, whichever way or side of the equation you happen to be sitting at, which side of the desk you're on. So there's links to all that stuff here and there'll be a link to this in the description.