How to Get Fired if you Work for the IRS

As far as I know, an IRS employee can’t be fired just for leaving you on hold for 3 hours, or for giving you bad information that contradicts what the previous IRS employee told you, or for rejecting your Offer in Compromise (as long as procedures are followed). Of course, there could be additional actions and circumstances that might warrant termination, but generally speaking, these are not adequate grounds.

But according to rules established during the 1998 tax code reform, an IRS employee is supposed to be fired for the following actions unless the Commish determines that the employee should be given a second chance due to the presence of mitigating factors:

  • Purposely failing to obtain signatures required prior to certain asset seizures;
  • Lying under oath relevant to matters involving a taxpayer account;
  • destroying or falsifying evidence relevant to matters involving a taxpayer account;
  • Assault or battery of a taxpayer or fellow employee (that’s comforting, knowing that an IRS employee will likely get fired for cold-cocking a taxpayer) — but only if there is a conviction;
  • Purposely violating a provision in the IRC, Regs, IRM, or internal policies for the purpose of retaliating against or harassing a taxpayer or fellow employee;
  • Willful failure to file a tax return or underreporting income on a tax return…

There are others, but this list is getting tedious.  It’s funny to me that some of these prohibitions are related to actions against other IRS employees.  Don’t they get along over at the IRS, or what?

A House Committee has introduced a bill that would add another bullet point to this list above. H.R. 709, the Prevent Targeting at the IRS Act, would require the firing of IRS employees who act in their official capacity to target entities or individuals for personal or political reasons.  And presumably any offending employee would have to be fired regardless of how merciful the Commissioner wants to be.  Thank you Robert Wood for the info on H.R. 709.

In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for the Prevent Stupidity at the IRS Act.

IRS Impersonation Scams More Prevelant Than Ever

TIGTA big shot, Timothy Camus, recently testified before the US Senate Finance Committee on the topic of “Tax Schemes and Scams.”  By TIGTA, I of course mean the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.  And by “big shot,” I of course mean that he is the Deputy Inspector General for Investigations, and he wears a nice looking mustache, and he tells tax criminals that their day will come.

According to his testimony, IRS phone impersonation scams have quickly become one of TIGTA’s top concerns.  The agency had received only scattered reports of phone scams prior to the summer of 2013.  TIGTA started to track this crime in October 2013, and ever since then has kept statistics and concentrated efforts on eradicating this terrible, frustrating crime.

The way it works is the scammers call and threaten you with criminal penalties if you don’t pay a certain sum to address a tax problem that usually doesn’t even exist.  The victim is asked to load money onto a prepaid debit card and then call back with the card number.  These criminals used to target primarily the elderly or recent immigrants; the most vulnerable people who do not have sufficient command of the English language and/or those who do not have an understanding of the US tax system.  But Camus says that they have not been discriminating much lately.  He describes having received a call himself, at home, the weekend before his speech, and he told the guy, “your day will come.”  I have received phone scam calls too, most recently a very generic sounding recording using robo-call technology.

Here are some of the key phone scam statistics from Camus’ Senate testimony:

  • TIGTA has received over 366,000 complaints of phone scam calls (9,000 – 12,000 per week)
  • 3,052 victims paid out about $15.5 million
  • one poor fool paid over $500,000
  • 296 of these victims gave more than just money (i.e., social security number or other sensitive identifying information)

Camus says that this scam is the subject of an “ongoing multi-agency investigation.”  Let’s hope they figure out how to catch these guys because the IRS public service messages about how to avoid phone scams aren’t working as effectively as they should.

The IRS and Social Media

Discover the IRS’s Social Media Presence, Minus Instagram

The IRS’ use of social media has always seemed sort of awkward to me.  There’s the IRS Facebook account, for example.  Completely bare bones.  A couple pictures of IRS national headquarters, a blurb about this not being an official source of information about the IRS, and links to the official IRS homepage.   Zzzzzzzzzz.

Yes, I know it has 38,000 likes.  But you have to wonder if these people really “like” the IRS, or if they are acknowledging the IRS in the only way that Facebook allows, there being no “unlike” button.

The IRS doesn’t have an Instagram account.  Their complete social media portfolio includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and IRS2Go, their mobile app (which I’m not sure really counts as social media).  But thank goodness they don’t; there is nothing really visual about what they do.  One look at an tax law firm Facebook page will confirm that.  What kinds of pictures would they post? Suits and cubicles, Friday potlucks, maybe some of the stuff they have seized and sold at auction?

Just for fun, I looked at some of the 46,738 photos with an IRS hashtag and they are nothing special.  Most of the #IRS posts are advertisements.  The second most common, as far as I can tell, are pictures that have nothing to do with the Internal Revenue Service.  Maybe IRS means something else in another country, that’s what I’m thinking.  Lots of Ford Mustangs – maybe a special edition or some fancy tuning.  By far the best ones are the memes.  There is one meme of a guy sitting in his car with a tethered cheetah sitting shotgun that says “When you get your tax return and start buying unnecessary sh*t.”  There are a few memes of skeletons “waiting for their tax refund” or “waiting at the IRS office.”  There is a cartoon in the style of Far Side (accredited to “Reynolds”) that shows a couple sitting at the IRS office.  The sign says “THE IRS” and the guy turns to his wife and says, “Like the sign says . . . it’s all THEIRS.”  My favorite, probably because I can identify with it best, is a screenshot of a cell phone displaying the IRS toll free phone number and the call timer at 50 minutes.  The caption: “This is why no one likes the #IRS…”  Thank you for that @caitlinmaguffee.  It helps to have a good sense of humor this time of year.

Franchise Tax Board (FTB) Contact and Customer Service: Request a Call-Back

There are many things that the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) does that I would hope the IRS never adopts.  But some might appreciate it if the IRS would follow the example of the FTB when it comes to their customer service phone lines.

Clearly, the IRS could never deliver the same level of customer service as a state taxing entity, due to the insanely large number of calls that IRS gets each day.  I don’t think anybody really expects them to compete on that level.  Likewise, it is naive to think that the state should be able to answer every call as it comes in without leaving taxpayers on hold.  However, FTB has figured out a way to make it much more convenient for the caller.  The FTB phone system has a feature that allows the taxpayer to request a call-back during times of heavy call volume.  The system estimates about how long you’ll have to wait on hold if you choose to hold, and then gives you the option of leaving your name and number and having an FTB customer service rep call you back during that same time frame.

This call-back feature is handy for tax attorneys and tax practitioners, but it is especially useful for unrepresented taxpayers.  I have used the call-back feature a few times, but I typically do not mind holding either.  I often have a handful of cases that are queued up and ready to go once they pick up, and while I wait there’s always Instagram and TIGTA reports, but mostly Instagram.  But taxpayers calling in on their own case can be really discouraged by a 30+ minute wait, and it is nice to have the option of saving your place in line without actually waiting on the line.

I understand the administrative burden this feature would cause though.  It’s not a huge amount of extra work, but even a little extra work on such a large scale can be reason enough to just maintain the status quo.  IRS customer service has really gone down the toilet in the last few years, so really status quo wouldn’t seem too awful right about now compared to any additional slippage in service.