The IRS will stop making most unannounced visits to taxpayers' homes and businesses

A sign outside the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, on May 4, 2021. Effective immediately, the Internal Revenue Service will end its decades-old policy of making unannounced home and business visits — in a nod to worker safety and combatting scammers who pose as IRS agents. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

The Internal Revenue Service will largely diminish the amount of unannounced visits it makes to homes and businesses, citing safety concerns for its officers and the risk of scammers posing as agency employees, it announced Monday.

Typically, IRS officers had done these door visits to collect unpaid taxes and unfiled tax returns. But effective immediately, they will only do these visits in rare circumstances, such as seizing assets or carrying out summonses and subpoenas. Of the tens of thousands of unannounced visits conducted annually, only a few hundred fall under those circumstances, the agency said.