Strange Phone Call

[sea-tax]

Well I just had the strangest phone call. It was from a telemarketing group conducting a poll on what they said was on the behalf of the IRS. They asked me no personal questions about clients , myself or my firm. Simply wanted to know how many returns I prepare , and how many business returns make up that total. They gave me a phone number to call and ask the IRS about this poll. I have not called it yet.

They said the purpose of the call was to give the IRS feed back on how to better serve the public and taxprep people. Once I answered the two questions they informed me that I did not meet the criteria for there study .


Has anyone else had this phone call?

[Bird Legs]

Telephone Call

Haven't heard of this one before. Why would the IRS pay an outside firm to conduct
this type of poll when this is already done through the IRS Liason Committee meetings,
and teleconferences that the IRS conducts.
The IRS is getting feedback from the various national professional organizations.

[sea-tax]

Well I called and got the msg machine of an IRs employee from the Self-employed small business division. He stated that the firm conducting the survey is legit. The name of the company conducting the survey is Pacific Marketing Research.

[TAXBILLY]

How do you know that the phone number they gave you is actually an IRS number? Anyone can put a message on a machine.
taxbilly

[sea-tax]

How do you know that the phone number they gave you is actually an IRS number? Anyone can put a message on a machine.
taxbilly

Good Point . I actually just got off of the phone with the IRS employee and he gave me an employee ID number I called the 1040 line myself and verified that he worked there. After talking to all the employees at IRS it sounds legit. Even if it is not like I said before they never asked any personal information. Simply how many returns I prepared last year and of those how many were small business returns.

Anyhow I just thought I would let everyone know that this survey is out there and from what I can tell it is legit.

[veritas]

One has to

wonder why they don't pull up this information on their own computers. Wait their $21,000,000 TRS80s are probably overworked a little this year.

[OldJack]

:

Wait their $21,000,000 TRS80s are probably overworked a little this year.

Veritas when you said TRS80s I bout fell out of my chair laughing. Good one!

[BOB W]

RS specials

Yea, I remember them too. Mid to late '70s wasn't it?

[ChEAr$]

Trs 80

And I smiled, fondly. Wrote my very first tax software for a Model 1 when it only had
1 K memory and had to save programs on a tape player.
Sigh.

Holiday ChEAr$,
Harlan Lunsford, EA n LA

[outwest]

And I can still hear.

that distinctive sound of digital data on playback!!

Doug

[sea-tax]

Veritas when you said TRS80s I bout fell out of my chair laughing. Good one!

Sorry I don't get it. I guess it was before my time.

[BOB W]

Trs80

was a Radio Shack computer that used "Basic", one of the first consumer based computers on the market. It used a "plug in" tape recorder to save programs and data. What a hassel it was but it was breaking consumer tech at the time.

[veritas]

also known as

"Trash 80"

[BOB W]

Hours......

... and hours just to do simple stuff. But I learned how to add, subtract, multiply and divide on that blank screen.... WOW...

Trash 80, haven't heard that in a long time.

[OldJack]

Sorry I don't get it. I guess it was before my time.

Probably long before your time. Ha! It was the most popular pc computer that pre-dated the first IBM-PC. I bought a competitor pc, name I don't remember, running CPM operating system and then switched to the "new" DOS from Microsoft the year it came out. My PC had one "single" sided floppy with a green display and 64k memory (thats "k" not meg or gig).