We were called twice by these folks asking for my business partner by name about a company tax issue. Since he is working on an extended project and since he doesn;t handle any of the finance issues, I offered to help. The first caller said they needed to speak to him; and that the IRS does not allow him to talk to anyone else. They implied that they had been in touch with him about this urgent matter; I offered to take a callback number but he wouldn't provide it. Only my partner cold have that info. I pushed to clarify and after pressing twice, he admitted he was with Clear Creek and that he was calling on behalf ot the IRS. I told him I'd have my business partner follow up if he would email him.
Today another call from a friendly woman asking for my business partner again. Same drill, although she did not represetn herself as the IRS. She told me it was a state payroll issue that had to be handled immediately. The address they had for us is 2 years old, which starting setting alarms for me. I told her I'd have him call her back, and got her number.
I called our payroll company who said there had been a filing issue six months ago - I remembered then that they had emailed me about that. They explained it's been taken care of and is a closed matter. They offered to have this person call them to confirm - expecting that they wold not want to ever do that.
Now comes the fun part. First I searched the internet. And found a few negative reports here. I called her back, told her the payroll company had dealt with the matter several months ago and had offered to let her call. At this point the woman went ballistic, yelling at me about how she didn't want to talk to anyone but just to help me, that they get their data every day and it's not settled and I better have them help or the IRS would take action against us. When I tried to break in to tell her about having found negative report son the web and would handle it, she wouldn't stop talking, told me I was foolish if I didn't have them help us today, and that I better keep their number. I tried to say good bye, but she wouldn't stop yelling. So I hung up on her. Then she called *me* back to tell me how rude I was to hang up on someone who wants to help me... Wow.
Anyway, I'm glad they didn't call asking for me originally. I might have provided some info - though I'd never provide things liek tax id, bank accoutn etc to a random caller.
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