IRS making in person contact without advance contact?

[Dark Optimist]

A friend of a friend got a call from an IRS agent, saying that they were at their front door. The agent said they needed them to file a 941 for 2015.

My friend knew that the IRS does not contact people by phone and said this to the person on the line. She was not home but said that she did not believe they were at her front door.

The person on the phone said they were in fact at her house and would leave some information behind.

Well, someone did leave a card with the correct address for the IRS office in our area and a taxpayer contact notice indicating that they were looking for her 2015 form 941.

I have not heard of the IRS actually showing up without prior contact by mail except for CID and I have a vague memory of them going into businesses unannounced when there are payroll tax issues, but I want to say the last time this happened was in the '80's.

And the strangest part is that the company that they are looking for a 941 for did not exist in 2015 and even today she does not have any employees.

We are checking the contact information on the business card to confirm if this is legit.

Has anyone else had someone actually show up at the door?

[AndyK]

Forward all information to IRS inspection.

We NEVER just show up.

Everything is preceded by written communications.

UNLESS you received some letters.

[noblepa]

If that's a scam, it seems like a pretty expensive one for the perpetrators.

In the typical phone scam, where they call and tell you that they are about to arrest you, unless you send them $500 in Best Buy gift cards, they can invest a little in robocall equipment and a phone line. They then sit back, let the machine make the calls and wait for the gullible and fearful to call back, pleading not to be prosecuted. The machine can make 50 calls per hour.

In this scam, however, someone has to take the time to travel to various target homes, running the risk that the intended victim won't be home, not to mention travel expenses. A single scammer could do maybe 20 calls in a day.

Its like mail/email scams. In the old days, when all we had was snail-mail, no Nigerian princes sent letters saying they had $42 million dollars for you. That would cost actual money for paper and postage. Now the cost of sending scam emails is virtually nil.

[The Observer]

The person at the door was most likely a IRS revenue officer. They are tasked with working delinquent return investigations, particularly 941 returns. As such, it is unlikely a scam artist would use this as a route to get money from of your FOAF.

And while the general rule is that mail from the IRS would precede any in-person visitation from an IRS employee, there are situations where it appears that the mail was not sent:

(1) The recipient did receive the mail, but forgot about it, never opened/read it, and/or tossed it.

(2) The taxpayer moved from the original address of the mailing and never notified the IRS of their new address. The revenue officer located a potentially new address for the taxpayer and attempted contact there. There is no requirement that the IRS has to keep sending mail to any address just because the taxpayer *might* have relocated there.

(3) IRS mistake where the letter was sent to the wrong address, but either the mail was not returned, or the IRS failed to update or note that the address was wrong. In this case, the revenue officer would be presuming that the mail had gone to the right address.

I have not heard of the IRS actually showing up without prior contact by mail except for CID and I have a vague memory of them going into businesses unannounced when there are payroll tax issues, but I want to say the last time this happened was in the '80's.

It still happened after the 80's, into the 90's and up to the 2000's when identify theft started becoming a critical issue with tax information; as well, the phone scams in the early and mid 2010's where the grifters impersonated IRS collection personnel pushed the IRS to start the policy of mail and phone contact attempts prior to field visitations.

And the strangest part is that the company that they are looking for a 941 for did not exist in 2015 and even today she does not have any employees.

But she must have initiated some sort of paperwork somewhere to indicate she was starting a business. Most likely a mistake was made by her, the IRS and/or a third party that indicated that the company either started business or had employees in 2015. This happens not infrequently and this can be addressed as filing a 941 return for the quarter in question showing no employees and marking it "Final" on the face of the return. This will allow the service center to update the records and close out the filing requirement for the business. Alternatively, she can contact the revenue officer and provide the information that they need to close out the return and investigation.

We are checking the contact information on the business card to confirm if this is legit.

The card left with your FOAF should have the employee's unique employee identification number on it. You can call to the office number and request to speak to the manager to confirm it, or alternatively contact the Inspector General for the IRS' office and get them to confirm the identity. If it were me, and the location of the office was convenient, I would just visit the office and ask to speak to the revenue officer. The investigation could be resolved rather quickly at that point.