My wife recently got a message saying that she’s been selected to receive a $1,000 Best Buy gift card from the “Cafemom Team”. She’s a member of the website and a frequent on their forums. The message was sent to her personal inbox on the site, not her personal email. We’ve actually gotten free stuff from them before - we got a bunch of playgroup toys from Playskool, I guess by agreeing to write journal entries on the site about our kids’ playing experience.
It easier to just post the message:
"You’re one of 13 CafeMom moms who were chosen. Each of you was chosen for a different reason; you were chosen because you’ve been writing about moving to a new house. Best Buy wants to help with your transition by giving you a $1000 Best Buy gift card that you can use to buy appliances for your new home. There are a few things that you’ll need to do in return, so please read the following carefully.
Complete a W-9 form
Because the gift card is valued at more than $600, we’re required to ask you to fill out a W-9 form. Around this time next year, we’ll send you a 1099-misc form which means you’ll have to declare the $1000 as income on your 2008 taxes. If you have any questions or concerns about this, or if you decide you don’t want to participate, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
You can download a pdf of the form here. We also emailed one to you. Please contact us if you cannot download or print the form, and give us either a fax number or address we can mail it to.
Fill out the form and send it back.
By Fax: (xxx) xxx-xxxx att: xxxx
By Mail: xxxxxxxx
Write three journal posts
Once we receive your W-9, we’ll send your gift card and more details about the journal posts we would like you to write. If we don’t receive your W-9 by Feb 6, we’ll have to give the opportunity to someone else, so get back to us as soon as you can."
So what’s this about a gift being more than $600 requiring her to fill out a form?
Don’t know, but if they are providing the W-9 I’d make sure it’s a real W-9- these don’t have any personal info on them other than name, address and SSN or EIN.
Here’s a link to the IRS site which shows the form and instructions. The forms asks for your taxpayer i.d. or social security number, so if you’re not sure if this offer is legit, you may want to pursue this further before submitting such a form. I gave the form a quick scan, and I think there’s a section about scams (phishing), so maybe that will help.
I think the W-9 sounds legitimate, because it’s used to declare/confirm receipt of income from “freelancing” to the company that did the paying. I would be more worried that she’ll accept the $1,000 and then be asked to write glowing reviews of some featured products. You should be able to contact the website admins through their posted contact info. That reduces the chance that the phone number you’re sending it to is bogus.
One last note: the company will send you a 1099-misc that tells you how to account for the income. Make sure you’ve got $300 sitting around to pay the taxes on this $1000 “gift,” because the $1000 is paid to you as income, but no taxes are withheld.
Eh, I’m not so sure. The $600 thing doesn’t seem to be completely fabricated (e.g. see What is a Form W-9? (with pictures) where it mentions the 600 USD), and a real W-9 doesn’t really have much personal information on it, as pointed out.
As for free lunches, the OP did say they already did receive some free stuff … however I do agree that it seems unlikely that BB would offer a gift certificate of that amount for almost no reason. But the W-9, if real, strikes me as a pretty strange way to try to steal some info.
So is the form they sent a real W-9? Does the download link they provided go to the real thing?
I don’t think there’s any real, easy way to confirm a person’s SSN (it can be done but people rarely do it).
Not having her real SSN would not preclude her from getting her $1000. It would preclude her from paying the taxes at the end of the year - but that’s something that can be fixed well after the prize has been given and received.
I would be very surprised if this offer hadn’t first been publicised.
Any company giving stuff away would surely make some announcement that they were going to do do, and then state the reasons for doing it.
I seriously cannot imagine any company giving stuff away on the quiet, and if this is the way its supposedly being done, wouldn’t you think that a bit odd ?
A W-9 is (as others have noted) a legitimate form used when you may need someone’s tax ID number for some purpose - I once had to get that from a daycare center to arrange a corporate grant for them.
HOWEVER - “only” name, address and SSN would seem to be quite useful information for someone planning on conducting a little identity theft.
The amount (1,000) is just low enough to a believable giveaway amount, and high enough that tax considerations are an issue. I don’t know what the rules are regarding contest givaways but 600 does sound right.
Personally I’d be suspicious also and would not comply without hearing back from the people running the board, and/or verifying the address you’d send the W-9 to as being a legitimate Best Buy address.
"We can understand your concern, as obviously your SSN is a very private piece of information! The reason that we need you to fill in a W9 form is that we are legally obligated to report the gift card to the IRS as income paid to you. Since it is over $600, you’ll have to report it to the IRS and pay income tax on that amount. We need a W9 (with your SSN on it) so we have the correct paperwork to file with the IRS. It’s unfortunate that we have to do it this way, there just isn’t any other way. Let us know how you’d like to proceed.
The CafeMom Team"
I had her ask some follow-up questions about if there was anything specific she had to do with the card and got this response:
"Thank you for sending in your questions
We’ll send the card out within 2 weeks of receiving your W-9 form.
You can use the gift card on any item at Best Buy.
When you receive your card you will get information about the journal posts, they are not required, but we would love for you to share your experience of shopping at Best Buy
Please let us know if you have any other questions,
Well, we got our Best Buy card last night. Checked it on their website, and everything’s okay. Guess sometimes things that are too good to be true really are true. Thanks everyone for their help.
When is it illegal for a company to request a W-9… I mean, is it always legal to do this? What I’m getting at (as questions are often times 3 questions deep) is that a company promised to pay out earnings to a group of members via an online business… and repeatedly has promised to finally payout… This same company is has requested W9’s and W8’s from members… Pardon me for asking… but this means that all the members are giving out personal information and identification to this company. The company has not paid anyone a dime… not for years but recently resurrected itself promising to pay people and gave dates of payouts… mentioned they had cashiers checks ready to send out… months ago… and nothing has been sent out, nobody has been paid… so my question is … is there some type of fraud this company has committed requiring everyone to send these forms in when they had no intent of paying and have no intention of doing so? Is there a point in time when this company is doing something illegal by requesting personal information from everyone and it’s now out in limbo? Okay so maybe it was a personal mistake to send this information but it was done in good faith… and now, said company has not held up its end of the mutual agreement. Have they committed a crime ?
Requesting that someone fill out a W-9 is not a crime, but what someone does with that information might be. Failure to pay according to contract terms is probably not a crime either, but could be pursued using legal means.
Also, it is possible to request an EIN (Employer Identification Number) from the IRS and put the EIN on the W-9. This way, you are not providing your SSN (Social Security Number).