Unannounced IRS Visits
If someone knocks at your door claiming to be the IRS don’t believe them.
The IRS has ended unannounced visits of revenue agents and other personnel to taxpayers’ homes and places of business. If you think this is to protect taxpayers, you would be mistaken. According to the IRS this measure is designed to protect IRS employees.
The IRS has announced that it will send an appointment letter, formally known as a 725-B, to taxpayers and schedule a follow-up meeting when a matter needs to be discussed.
However, the IRS will still make unannounced visits in limited cases where the agency needs to serve a summons or subpoena, or when there’s an enforcement action like the seizure of assets at risk of being removed from the U.S. Those instances typically only occur a few hundred times a year, as opposed to the tens of thousands of unannounced visits that IRS’s revenue officers have made in the past years. IRS Criminal Investigation employees, can also still make unannounced visits.
What should you do if someone shows up at your door claiming to be with the IRS? Keep your door closed. Ask them for ID and give them the name and contact information for your tax professional or attorney, do NOT open the door and let them in and do NOT provide them with any other information or answer any questions. They may not be with the IRS or worse yet, they are and anything you say can’t be unsaid.