[2011 update: This is another post I am porting more for completeness than anything else. When I wrote it, I had an incorrect assumption, but the error was confirmed by a call to Citizens Bank, so they were as wrong as I was. The take-away here: Don't believe even confirmed information. You have to get the correct information.]
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Current mood: 
enlightened
"Not Your Typical Bank" is the slogan of Citizens Bank, a large chain of retail banks serving the eastern U.S., and noted here in the Pittsburgh PA area for having bought the retail business of century-old Mellon Bank a few years ago.
Today's snail-mail brought an I.R.S. notice. At least it sure looked like an I.R.S. notice. It was printed on I.R.S. letterhead (even if it was clearly computer generated on thin paper), had an I.R.S. return address, and paid for with "Presorted First-Class Mail, Postage and Fees Paid, IRS, Permit No. G-48". Sure sounded like our taxpayer-fed I.R.S. to me!
Inside was a Form 1099, a simple statement from the I.R.S., not my bank, that "Recipient" (with my Social Security number) had been credited with [dollar amount] of interest in calendar year 2007, by "Payer's Federal Identification Number" of 38-1798424.
Say what? The amount sounded like the interest I might have earned on my paltry savings account, so I called their toll-free number, and yup, sure 'nuff, that's exactly what it was about, and who it was that had paid it.
OK, so why in tarnation is the I.R.S. sending this out? At the government's -- the taxpayers' -- cost? Cannot a privately run bank, who I alone am sending hundreds of dollars in interest each month on various loans, shell out the postage to send out routine Form 1099s, like in every previous year that I've gotten them?
No, not your typical bank at all. This one gets the taxpayer to pay for sending out its own private mail.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong here?
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From the 2008 blog post comments:
Kathy I find your article on this quite interesting. I received one of these as well with my name, social security number and the same exact Payers Federal Identification number that was on yours.
Stuart Strickland Turns out what this is is indeed IRS-related, but not what I thought. Citizens Bank had nothing to do with it.What is odd is, if this is from Citizens Bank, I have never had an account with Citizens Bank ever! So what's up with this? I called the IRS regarding this notice to ask what this was about and I couldn't get a straight answer. They never told me it was Citizens Bank. I only figured that out when I saw your blog and the Payer's Federal ID number was the same.
Remember last income tax season when many of us asked for a refund of excise taxes on telephone charges over the previous couple of years? The money that we got to deduct is considered by the IRS to be income.
More info here: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/contributors.asp?ID=1107
15 comments:
I received the same IRS notice this January 2018 for tax year 2017 with my employer account number on the notice. I do not have any accounts with Citizens bank, nor loans nor any other accounts I can reference to Citizens Bank through my employer number.
Seems like a scam, as a way for citizens bank to send possibly millions of these notices to the IRS claiming small interest paid, to reduce their tax liability on profits. Banks are so ethical, just remember what Wells Fargo had been up to recently with false accounts n such.
I call total bs on this and the IRS for not giving proper notice of what the so called
"Interest Paid" is about.
I personally looked into this. The Number you are all searching IS NOT an EIN and this is a notice that THE IRS PAID YOU INTEREST INCOME!!! that number you are all reading is an internal number the IRS uses and has NOTHING to do with EIN numbers. You were paid interest income FROM the irs due to a delay in a tax refund or similar. The notice is telling you this and instead of receiving a actual 1099 from a business entity, the IRS sent you that notice. Their mistake for the last 10+ years is they keep placing that number that "resembles" an EIN and the poor sap that owns that EIN is paying the price for it by getting THOUSANDS of inquiries into their business. As of today, January 17, 2021, the number in question was issues to another business entity who incorporated in 2019, thus IMPOSSIBLE for that entity to be the one in the notice from 2011. It is a crying shame the IRS has not stopped using that number which has caused THOUSANDS of google searches over the last decade looking into the issue.
Thank you for the explanation. I am now trying to figure out where it goes in my taxes ...lol
My taxes did come very late
So I just got this notice and found everyone having these things pop up but my deceased mother got one, and this just doesn't make any sense, she could not have collected anything in 2020, although she may have been one of the dead voters for Biden and this is the payoff?? I guess I will be contacting the IRS to see what the heck this could be.
It’s a scam
Why is the message copied and pasted on word for word on all the chats asking about this letter? If I were to guess I’d say it the scammer who made this because who else would go through all the trouble to look this question up and copy and paste it on so many different chats? Maybe someone who wants many people to think this is a legit IRS form? More than likely since I got the same form this year 2021 for supposedly 2013 and when I called the department of treasury they said I had no past due balances it and debts to collect. Scammers sheesh 😒
Why is the message copied and pasted on word for word on all the chats asking about this letter? If I were to guess I’d say it the scammer who made this because who else would go through all the trouble to look this question up and copy and paste it on so many different chats? Maybe someone who wants many people to think this is a legit IRS form? More than likely since I got the same form this year 2021 for supposedly 2013 and when I called the department of treasury they said I had no past due balances it and debts to collect. Scammers sheesh 😒
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It does state “(INTERNAL REVENUE USE ONLY)” in bold font, within the same box as the “PAYER’S” Federal Identification Number, immediately following (next to) “38-1798424” so it makes sense that the number would be an internal number for IRS only. I agree that they most certainly shouldn’t be using a number that belongs to or is associated with an actual/legitimate company/business. Instead, seeing as they are the IRS, you’d think they could set aside a series of numbers that would only be used by/for the IRS and prevent any other entity from ever being able to use the same number.
For those reading that received an IRS letter 1099-INT…odds are you received the monthly child tax payments last year (June-December) and one or more of them was received late. I myself didn’t start receiving mine until September. Hope that helps someone and thanks for the excellent explanation Gamblemarco!!
Lol! Yes! Except I got one, and I voted for Trump.
This form is very misleading. It is from the Department of the Treasury and says it is not a tax bill. YET, the words "Form 1099-INT" are written in small font VERTICALLY on the left of the box with the information. It is unlike all of the rest of the IRS documents that have the form number in plain sight in BOLD at the TOP of the form. VERY MISLEADING!
I did find out in my case, the "Total Interest Paid or Credited" was with regards to my 2020 tax return refund being overpaid by the government (possibly because they mailed the refund to me late). TOTALLY CRAZY! So the amount the IRS overpaid my refund now has to be entered on my 2021 tax return and now has decreased my 2021 refund by a hand full of dollars.
I hope this helps someone else.
This blog information is very useful to everyone. Thanks for sharing. Get services of form 1099 online
I am thankful for the information shared on this site. I was initially wondering why our non-profit would have received interest income from the company that had that Federal ID Number. This blog helped me remember that we did receive interest from the IRS regarding the Employee Retention Tax Credit. This was a huge help. They never should have assigned the number the IRS uses for this to an actual company. That was confusing.
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