Just a friendly public service announcement
Getting a notice from the IRS in the mail can seem like a scary and nerve wracking thing. However, that is the way for IRS to get in touch with you. Whether the IRS is sending out a delinquent payment notice, or approving your extension or whatever the case may be, letters in the mail are a good thing!
Hackers and phonies try to scam people all the time for various reasons and now more than ever it is important to protect our identities. Whether you lose your credit card and have to freeze it or you load your computer with the latest and greatest antivirus software, protecting yourself, your family, and maybe even your business, is a high priority. Therefore, making sure you know the proper protocol of the IRS is valuable information!
Thanks to technology, hackers seem to pop up more than disappear and a lot of hackers try to con people over the phone, according to the IRS website. Documentation from the IRS should come in the mail first before ever being contacted over the phone. If no documentation comes through the mail and a call happens, it’s a big red flag that something is off, so thankfully the IRS has provided guidelines to help people not get taken advantage of:
- First, the IRS will never demand immediate payment, or again, call about a payment without first sending a mailed bill.
- Second, they will never demand you pay without an opportunity to question the payment or appeal the amount owed.
- Third, they will never require a specific payment method such as a debit card and they will never ask for a credit card number over the phone.
- Lastly, the IRS will never threaten to bring local police or other groups to you and have you arrested for not paying.
If you ever have any questions about any taxes being owned, call 1.800.366.4484, especially if you think you’ve received a call you think might be phony. Keep in mind, the IRS will never contact you through a text message, unsolicited emails, or through any sort of social media. Further, the official site for the IRS is irs.gov. Anything coming from irs.com or irs.org is a scam.
For more information on the scams and the types of scams, visit the official website!
