Tax season is upon us! Millions of Americans across the country are collecting all their documents in preparation of Tax Day, Tuesday, April 18, 2017. The traditional Tax Day of April, 15 falls on a Saturday this year. Typically the deadline would be shifted to the following Monday, but that Monday is Emancipation Day which is a legal holiday in Washington D.C. The IRS will process somewhere around 150 million tax returns this year.
Tax season is a good time to bring attention to the continuous telephone scam callers pretending to be the IRS. These calls tend to operate in a variety of ways.
- Caller pretends to be an IRS agent demanding you pay back taxes immediately. They may even provide you with a fake name and badge number.
- Caller may threaten arrest if you don’t immediately pay. If you don’t answer the phone, they may leave a voicemail with this information.
- Caller may require you to use a prepaid debit card or other form of payment over the phone.
- Caller may demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to appeal or question the amount they say you owe.
The IRS will never do any of the above. If you get a call like any of the examples above or from someone simply claiming to be the IRS and demanding money, do the following:
- Never provide payment information over the phone.
- If you know you owe taxes or think you might owe, contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040.
- If you know you don’t owe taxes, report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 1-800-366-4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
As mentioned in the Grandparent Scam, scam callers have ways of altering caller IDs to make it look like the IRS or other reputable agencies are calling. Never provide payment or private information unless you are absolutely certain that the caller is who they say they are and represent who they say they represent. The IRS will always mail you a bill before calling about any taxes you may owe.
Visit www.irs.gov for additional information on taxes, forms and known scams.
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