The IRS has provided guidance on taxpayers and their representatives making verbal requests for transcript information.
Background.
Tax transcripts are summaries of a taxpayer’s tax information. There are different types of tax transcripts such as wage and income transcripts and return transcripts. Wage and income transcripts are used by tax professionals to make sure that their clients’ returns contain all of the information that has been reported to the IRS. Return transcripts are used by lenders to verify a borrower’s income.
Tax professionals with authorization (i.e., a properly completed Form 2848, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative, or Form 8821, Tax Information Authorization) can obtain client transcripts by: (1) calling IRS to request a taxpayer’s tax transcripts be mailed to the taxpayer’s address of record; (2) calling IRS to have a taxpayer’s masked or unmasked transcripts placed in the practitioner’s e-Services secure mailbox; or (3) using IRS e-Services Transcript Delivery System (TDS) to obtain a taxpayer’s masked or unmasked transcripts. (IR 2019-101)
In addition to the three methods for obtaining tax transcript information described above, taxpayers and authorized representatives can call the IRS and ask for information contained on a tax transcript to be provided verbally.
Verbal disclosure requests.
Before responding to a taxpayer and/or a taxpayer’s representative’s request for verbal disclosure of tax transcript information, taxpayers and their representatives need to confirm their identity and their entitlement to receive the requested tax transcript information.
A taxpayer, after confirming their identity, can give Oral Disclosure Consent (ODC) to have tax transcript information released to a third-party only when it relates to the resolution of an open tax matter, such as an IRS-issued notice.
To continue your research on transcripts of tax returns, see FTC 2d/FIN ¶ S-6409.
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