2023-07-24 18:08:33
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Office announced Monday it is ending its decades-long policy of unannounced visits to homes and businesses to keep workers safe and crack down on scammers posing as IRS agents.
Effective immediately, tax agents will no longer make unscheduled visits to taxpayers’ homes and businesses “except in a few unique circumstances,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. Instead, the agency will send letters to people to schedule meetings.
The change ends “an era at the IRS,” the agency’s new commissioner, Daniel Werfel, told reporters on a call Monday. The visits seek to resolve taxpayer responsibilities by collecting unpaid taxes or unfiled returns.
In recent years, the agency has experienced more threats, partly linked to conspiracy theories that agents would target middle-income taxpayers more aggressively following the passage of a climate, health and tax bill that provided $80 billion to boost tax collections.
In response, the agency announced last August a comprehensive review of security at its facilities. And in May, the IRS said it would begin limiting personally identifiable information from workers in communications with taxpayers.
The National Union of Treasury Employees, which represents IRS workers, praised the agency for ending unannounced visits.
The issue of home visits has been politically contentious this year.
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in March asking why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent shortly following testifying in Congress regarding his investigation of Twitter logs.
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