I have had two clients call me this morning saying that they received phone calls from people claiming to be IRS agents. They were told that they owed the IRS money, and that they needed to provide their bank account information and pay this now, or they would be arrested. Of course, this is a scam. These people are not IRS agents. The IRS does not call on the telephone. There are so many things wrong about such a call that I do not have time now to go into it. What I tell my tax clients is that if anyone should call claiming to be from the IRS (or Department of Revenue for that matter), tell them that your tax preparer is an attorney and ask them to call me. If it really is the IRS (and it isn’t), they will politely take my information and hang up. They will contact me. Since it is not the IRS, they will either hang up immediately, or get louder and more threatening (at which point you should hang up). If you are not already my client, just hang up on them and call me. I will reassure you that it is a scam. Whatever you do, do not give them any information, especially not your social security number, date of birth or any bank account information!
The FTC has posted a nice article about this problem and what to do if you are called by a scammer:
Consumer.Ftc.Gov