There's the version of tax resolution the late-night commercials sell you. Then there's how it actually works. I'm Darrin Mish, a Tampa tax attorney. I've spent 32 years on the inside of these cases. Here's the real version.<\/p>\n\n\n
This is the full transcript of IRS Monday for October 12, 2026. Prefer to watch? The video is below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watch this episode of IRS Monday on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you owe the IRS and your phone rings with somebody saying you’ll be arrested today unless you pay, that call isn’t the IRS. Hang up. But here’s what gets people. While you’re worried about the fake call, the real IRS letters are sitting in your mailbox, and those are the ones that can take your paycheck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good morning. It’s Monday, and this is IRS Monday. I’m tax attorney Darrin Mish. Every Monday, I take the IRS news, cut out the noise, and tell you what actually matters if you owe the IRS or you think you might. Three things today: how to tell the real IRS from somebody pretending to be the IRS, a new account the government’s opening for millions of kids without anybody having to sign up, and a new tax credit that’s coming for people who give to school scholarships. Let’s go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The headline: who’s really contacting you? The IRS just put out its Cybersecurity Awareness Month reminder, and buried in it is a list every person with a tax problem should know cold. The IRS says it’ll never call you demanding immediate payment. It’ll never threaten to have you arrested. It’ll never contact you through a direct message on social media. And it doesn’t send you emails or texts out of the blue. You only get those if you signed up for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s how the real IRS works. The IRS says it normally contacts you the first time by mail, regular mail delivered by the United States Postal Service. Phone calls can happen, from the IRS or from a private collection agency the IRS has assigned to your account, but first contact normally comes in the mail. In-person visits are now rare, and they’re usually preceded by a letter as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the IRS gives you a simple test. A message isn’t legitimate if it’s unexpected, if it rushes you, if it threatens you, if it asks for personal or financial information, or if it demands payment right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s the part that most people miss. Scammers love people who owe. If you know you’ve got a balance, or you’ve got returns you haven’t filed, that threatening call sounds believable. You’re already scared. They’re counting on it. People pay thousands of dollars to a stranger on the phone while the real IRS debt sits there untouched and still growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it comes the other way, which is the part that worries me even more. Some people hear enough about scams that they decide everything’s a scam. They throw away real notices. I’ve been doing this for 32 years, and I can tell you that the real IRS is slower and quieter than the fake one. It doesn’t scream. It mails you a letter, and then another one, and then one day your bank account’s frozen or your employer gets a levy notice. Nobody called. Nobody threatened you. It just happened, because the deadline in a letter you didn’t open came and went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here’s how you check. Don’t call the number in the message. Don’t click the link. Log into your IRS online account or the official IRS app and look at your balance and your notices yourself. If the IRS really sent you something, it’s there. And while you’re in there, get an Identity Protection PIN. It’s a six-digit number that keeps somebody else from filing a tax return with your Social Security number. It’s free and it takes a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re getting something out of this, subscribe. I do this every Monday, and it’s a lot cheaper to hear it from me than to learn it from a levy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, the quick hits. Number one, Trump accounts. These are the new investment accounts for children that Congress created, and the government puts $1,000 into the account for babies born in 2025 through 2028. Up to now, a parent had to sign the child up. The Treasury Department and the IRS have changed course. Under new rules, Treasury is going to open the accounts automatically for eligible kids who don’t already have one. Treasury estimates that more than 60 million new accounts will be created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s why I’m telling you this. Automatic means you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to pay somebody a fee, you don’t have to click a link somebody texted you, and you don’t have to give a stranger your child’s Social Security number to claim the money. I promise you, the scammers saw this announcement too. If somebody offers to set up your kid’s account for you, that’s your answer right there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Number two, the Education Freedom Tax Credit. Treasury and the IRS have issued proposed rules for a brand new credit that starts with the 2027 tax year. If you give money to an approved organization that funds scholarships for elementary and high school students, you can take a credit of up to $1,700. A married couple filing together can take up to $3,400. And it’s a credit, not a deduction. The credit comes straight off your tax bill, dollar for dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two things to know. It’s nonrefundable, which means it can bring your tax down to zero but it can’t generate a refund. If you can’t use all of it, you can carry the rest forward for up to five years. And the scholarship organization has to be registered with the IRS and give you an acknowledgment with an identification number on it. No registration, no credit. So when the fundraising letters start showing up, and they will, make sure the organization’s registered before you write the check.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s this week’s takeaway. Every story today comes down to one question: who’s really on the other end? The fake IRS is loud and it’s in a hurry. The real IRS is quiet, it’s patient, and it puts everything in writing. So this week, do two things. Log into your IRS account and see what’s actually there, and open your mail. All of your mail. If what you find scares you, that’s what we’re here for. The reality is usually much more manageable than the nightmare in your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you owe the IRS and you want to know where you actually stand, let’s talk. Go to getirshelp.com or call my office at 813-229-7100. If you want IRS Monday in your inbox every week, sign up at getirshelp.com\/irs-monday. If you think somebody’s already used your Social Security number to file a tax return, watch this next one. I’ll see you next Monday, and thanks for watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One short video every Monday on what the IRS did last week and what it means for you. Sign up free at getirshelp.com\/irs-monday<\/a>. If you owe the IRS right now, call (813) 229-7100<\/a> for a free, confidential consultation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IRS Monday for October 12, 2026: how to tell a real IRS contact from a scam, the Trump accounts Treasury will now open automatically for eligible kids, and the new Education Freedom Tax Credit that starts with the 2027 tax year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[591],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irs-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29124,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28347\/revisions\/29124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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