IRS Identity Verification

momof3sons
Thu, 26 Mar 2015 21:43:27 +0000

Within the course of the last month, we have received, on two separate occasions, 2 letters at a time addressed to our home bearing the names of Hispanic women. Three names long, such as Maria Rodriguez Vazquez. DH and I both have “obvious” Jewish names. They were from the IRS and were forms saying that more info was needed in order to file our 2014 tax return. The forms gave a secure web site to visit or phone number to call. I looked up the form numbers and their origin on the web, and they seemed to be legit. I tried calling the IRS number that was given, proceeded to hold on for two hours and was then disconnected! So, I decided to go out of my way and go to a local IRS office to ask them what to do. Fortunately, there were no social security numbers listed on the forms. We also had our accountant file an extension for us, just to see if it would be allowed. It would have been disallowed, apparently, if someone had actually already filed a return for us.

The clerk at the local IRS office proceeded to lambaste me for daring to open the envelope in the first place. I said I thought there was fraud involved, but all she kept repeating was that I had no right to open the envelope!! The same thing happened about 2 weeks later, two more envelopes addressed to our home address with the three-name-long Hispanic women’s names. This time I opened the envelopes in a more gentle manner made copies of everything inside, sealed the envelopes back up so that only a trained spy would know they had been “tampered” with, and wrote on the outside of the envelopes “Return to sender. No such person has ever lived at this address. Fraud.” (We’ve lived her for 28 years and bought the house from the original owner.) A friend of mine believes that this is going to haunt us and someday we’ll find out that a lien has been put on our house!