Re: immediate payment
Part of the push is to panic a person into making a rash mistake. The TaxMan is much nastier than your average loan shark when it comes to shaking people done. Also, the unreasonable complexity of the US income tax does make for a believable scenario that one actually owes money. So hit someone who is bit dim with a threat of an imminent police raid and you might get their money.
There is one red flag that this is a scam. The local sheriff does not normally handle federal only warrants. This would more likely be the US Marshals or the donut eaters of the FBI as the IRS would be filing federal only charges.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
