This IRS Agent Researched a Solution Before Confirming I Had a Problem

I have two EINs. For the non-business people in the room, an EIN is basically a tax ID number for your business, like a Social Security number, but for your company. You're only supposed to have one. I apparently have two, and I needed to figure out which one was real before I could move forward with some important business registrations.

Simple enough problem, right? Call the IRS, get it sorted. That's what I thought.

I called the IRS Business & Specialty Tax Line. Couldn't get through to a person, so I joined a callback queue. Wait time: 58 minutes. I cleared my afternoon, told people not to come by, and waited.

The callback came.

The agent asked for the nature of my call. I told him I thought I might have two EINs and wanted to find out for sure. That's the whole ask. Confirm whether I have one or two, then figure out next steps from there.

Here's something that needs to be completely clear before anything else: this line is not one option among several. It's not a place that could point me somewhere else. The IRS Business & Specialty Tax Line is the only place on earth that can look at my identity and tell me how many EINs are attached to it. Not a website. Not a form. Not a different department. Not a Google search. Him, on that call, or nobody.

Within 90 seconds, before asking my name, my Social Security number, or either EIN, he started explaining that there's a department whose job is merging EINs. I redirected him: can we just look at my account first? He said "of course." Then he put me on hold for "three to seven minutes" to research that other department.

Sit with the order of operations here. He did not say "I have a phone number for that department." He did not say "this is who you'd need to talk to." He said he needed to go find out. Which means he didn't already have it memorized, ready, practiced. He went and researched it. That's an important distinction, because it means this wasn't a quick, harmless aside. It was him choosing to spend real time chasing a solution to a problem that, as far as he knew, might not exist.

Think about what would have had to be true for that to make sense. He would have had to already know I had two EINs. He didn't. I told him I thought I might. He had no name, no SSN, no EIN, nothing identifying. There was no information on his screen that could have told him a merge was the right path. He invented the diagnosis before doing the one thing that could confirm or rule it out: looking at my account.

If I have two EINs and they genuinely need to be merged, then yes, go get that information. But we didn't know that yet. Going and getting merge-department info before establishing whether a merge is even relevant is like a doctor researching surgeons before getting your test results back. The research itself isn't the problem. The order is.

Seven minutes later he came back. "I did this research for you, do you have a pen?" I asked what the information was. He said he may need to have me merge my accounts, and that's why he was giving me the info. I said we don't even know if I have two EINs yet. He said, "I know that. Why would you think I don't know that? Of course I know that. Why are you mentioning that?"

I said shouldn't we find that out first?

He said, "Hey, I did this research in order to get this information for you. This is here to prepare you. Because you never know, you may need to merge the accounts. This could be important. Do you NOT want this information?"

I want to be precise about what I did next, because it matters: I did not refuse the information. I did not interrupt him. I let him finish every sentence. I asked, calmly, the same single question I'd asked from the start: can we confirm whether I actually have two EINs first? That's it. Four sentences total, across the entire call, none of them confrontational.

I said let's find out first, can we look at my account?

He hung up.

I had waited over an hour for that call. I spoke four sentences. None of them were arguments. None of them refused anything he offered. I asked him to do the one thing his job exists to do, look at my account, and he ended the call instead.

He never pulled up my account. Never verified my identity. Never wrote a note. There is no record this call happened. He is, for all practical purposes, untraceable.

I called back. The automated system asked why I was calling. I told it I needed to talk to a person about a rep who had just called me from the IRS. It said "Thank you for calling the IRS. Goodbye." Then said it again in a different voice. Then hung up.

So I went looking for a way to file a complaint. I found TIGTA, the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the independent oversight body for the IRS. I went to their complaint page. Here is what it says, word for word:

"While the website is undergoing updates, please leave a message with our hotline at 1-800-366-4484 if you need to file a whistleblower complaint, report a potential threat, or report fraud, waste, and abuse by IRS employees or within IRS programs."

Let me sit with that for a second.

The official body responsible for oversight of the IRS, the place you go when an employee commits fraud, waste, or abuse, when someone is a whistleblower, when there is a potential threat, has decided the appropriate technology for receiving these reports is a voicemail box.

Not a form. Not an email. Not a secure submission portal. A voicemail.

I understand websites get updated. I understand things go down temporarily. But the fact that this was apparently an acceptable interim solution, that someone looked at the list of things TIGTA handles and decided voicemail is fine for that, tells you everything about how seriously the system takes your ability to hold it accountable.

At the end of the day I am exactly where I started this morning. Same two EINs. Same unanswered questions. And a little less faith in the system than I had when I woke up.

Tomorrow I'm calling back at 7am and trying again. What choice do I have?