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Talk about dumb crooks. Guess they never imagined that the IRS now has 16 cameras sighted on that PO Box and an agent sitting in the parking lot ready to pounce. Today a client brought in a notice they received in the mail about an IRS lien from 2011 (which did exist back then) and a proposed settlement for something like one-tenth the amount of the lien. I long ago filed the missing returns and as far as I know the lien was removed (client had refunds for all six missing years). I googled the phone number and up came many scam reports, with one poster remarking that they were using old data bases of lien info. This message came in the mail, not by phone or internet, so I guess that's one more warning we have to give our clients.

5 days with family, in October, should be the priority - clients don't hesitate to take off in Jan - April 15 each year do they?

If this worked at all though the crooks could easily change the letter to say to contact IRS at a stated phone number for instructions on how to make payments, then still scam unsuspecting individuals. I shared it so we'd be aware that crooks are now trying emails with attachments too.

GQueues is made for Google Calendar. That's why I'm going to check it out... after 10/17.

If you use Microsoft Outlook for your email, it has a built-in calendar that you can link to other devices.

The estate does not begin until a person dies, so the FY runs June 3 (date of death) until May 31. You don't have to mark it as a short year because it's not considered one. The second fiscal year, if there is one, runs June 1 to May 31.

Getting back to the original subject, the IRS released IR 2016-119 today pertaining to Practitioner Data Security. You can search for it on the IRS site as I did after receiving an email from the IRS' Philadelphia Stakeholder Liason, Stephen Connor, who sent out the IR as a Word doc to be downloaded. Just a touch of irony there. The thing is that this was a one-page statement that was certainly short enough that it could have been included in the body of the email.

Totally not feasible. No email, no online backup, no research, etc. When the internet goes down, we're not quite dead in the water, but we are severely limited.