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Taxpayer's Call To IRS Accidentally Broadcast On Howards Stern's Radio Show

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Coming to terms with your tax issues can be intimidating and sometimes, embarrassing. It's even more embarrassing when your private information is broadcast to millions of people.

That's exactly what a woman from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, says happened to her. The woman says she called the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to talk about her tax bill. At the same time, the IRS representative was on hold with Howard Stern's radio show. When the radio show took the IRS representative's call off hold, it apparently wasn't made clear to the IRS representative - who just kept talking. That conversation was broadcast on air.

How did the woman find out? Her phone started buzzing as she received numerous calls and texts from all over the country. Her personal phone number had been broadcast along with part of the conversation.

She asked the IRS rep, "Are you speaking to Howard Stern?" The woman said that he replied "something to the effect of 'I was' or 'I was on hold' or something like that."

Stern tried to get the IRS representative's attention by shouting his name ("Jimmy! JIMMY!") but the IRS rep ("Jimmy from Long Island") kept talking. Co-host Robin Quivers joked, "If he’s working we can’t interrupt him." Later, the pair asked the rep if he was a collector and he admitted that he worked "for the government." He did mention taxes during the call with the woman and it sounds like, from the brief clip, that he might have been a Revenue Officer or other IRS representative in the Collections department.

While the woman's name wasn't broadcast, other personal information was shared over the radio. She says, "I just feel terribly violated and I feel like I’m in jeopardy that my credit information might be out there and I’m just totally devastated."

The Howard Stern Show is currently broadcast on satellite radio on Sirius XM. In the show's heyday on mainstream radio, it reached 20 million listeners. For the first quarter of 2015, Sirius reported 27.74 million subscribers.

The woman told a local news outlet that the incident has been "devastating" and she has not been able to eat because of the stress. Of course, she's considering lawyering up.

The IRS representative might want to consider it, too. He's since been placed on administrative leave, according to the woman. The case is under investigation.

I've reached out to IRS for further comment. In the meantime, the IRS did release this statement to the media:

We are aware of this troubling situation, and we are currently reviewing the matter. The IRS takes the confidentiality of taxpayer information very seriously, and we have high standards that we expect and require employees to follow.

(Author's note: Since the original piece posted, the IRS sent a more complete statement which, in addition to the statement above includes the following language:

When situations arise, we take quick action and work with Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.)

You can hear a clip of the call here:

You can watch the extended version here. The tax bit is pretty extensive and quite detailed (interest and payments are detailed). Stern let it go on for some time, finding it funny and calling the job was the "most boring job ever" saying that he'd "rather live in his mother's basement." Note that there is some language NSFW.

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