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"The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced a record-breaking $299,997,000 fine imposed on an international network of companies for placing five billion robocalls to more than 500 million phone numbers over three months in 2021. The fined companies operated as Sumco Panama, Virtual Telecom, Davis Telecom, Geist Telecom, Fugle Telecom, Tech Direct, Mobi Telecom, and Posting Express. The enterprise violated a multitude of robocall prohibitions by making pre-recorded voice calls to mobile phones without prior express consent, placing telemarketing calls without written consent, dialing numbers included on the National Do Not Call Registry, failing to identify the caller at the start of the message, and failing to provide a call-back number that allowed consumers to opt out of future calls," explained the FCC press release." Finally these calls are so annoying! Probably 90 % of calls to my office landline are robocalls!

It appears that if you answer as a business, they will hang up. However, that doesn't cure the annoyance and wasted time to both my landline and my cell phone. If they identify on Caller ID as a spam risk, I just ignore, but it is still annoying and interrupts whatever you might be doing. My patience is getting short.

I listened to Commissioner Werfel last week at the Atlanta forum and was impressed with the direction he wants to take the IRS. Some preparers might be leery of IRS free-filing, but if all you are preparing are simple returns...you didn't have job security anyway. The new hires should at least be able to figure out how to feed a scanner.