IRS Leins
Federal Tax Liens can really make your life miserable! When your taxes are not paid, the IRS establishes a lien against all of your assets (especially real estate). This gives the IRS the legal right to collect taxes from the sale of your assets, which includes just about everything you own. The lien can be against you, your spouse, or your company. A lien against your company would seize your accounts receivables. At this point, everything you own is just one short step away from becoming the property of the United States Government. Liens filed against you by the IRS also show up on your credit report and often prevent you from opening a checking account or borrowing against any assets, like your home. The banks don’t want the extra work when the IRS comes in to take your money. With a Federal Tax Lien on your record, you can’t get a reasonable loan to purchase a car. Think about paying 18-22% interest on a car that is already too expensive. You definitely cannot buy or sell any real estate. The lists are endless.
IRS Levies
Levies can really do a lot of damage and even ruin your life. A levy is the IRS’s way of getting your immediate attention. What they are saying is, we have tried to communicate with you but you have ignored us. Levies are used to seize your wages and whatever other assets you have. If you own it, they can take it. That includes checking accounts, auto’s, stocks, bonds, boats, paychecks, and even Social Security checks! Imagine waking up one morning and finding all your bank accounts have been cleaned out. They will take every dime. If this amount did not cover what is owed, they’ll keep taking your money until you cover your tax liability. They know that levying your bank account will cause checks to bounce, alerting many people that you have tax problems. They don’t care! Their sole objective is to collect the taxes owed. Period. As bad as that is, a worse method is a wage levy (or garnishment). That’s when most of your paycheck goes to the IRS, they don’t leave you enough to pay the bills, and most of your check goes to the IRS each and every week until the debt is paid. If that doesn’t accomplish what they want, they’ll pull out all the stops. They’ll seize your assets and sell them at auction. That includes everything you own; home, cars, boats, jewelry, motorcycles, insurance polices, retirement funds, anything of value. We are often able to get those levies released and help you get out of this terrible situation. Our goal is to get you even with the IRS, with what you can afford, and let you start life anew.
IRS Wage Garnishment
You received a notice of “intent to Levy” 30 days ago and you forgot or ignored it. Now it’s payday. Expecting a check, you open the envelope and find that the IRS has taken most of your money. What’s left is not enough to pay the rent, car payment, buy groceries, or pay the rest of the bills. This action will continue on every check due you, until the tax owed is paid in full. Now you’re in big financial trouble. No matter how hard you plead with your employer they can not give you your money. Because once a wage garnishment is filed with your employer, your employer is required by law to collect a large percentage of each of your paychecks. We are regularly retained to negotiate the release of IRS wage garnishments by arranging a payment plan. The payment plan negotiated by us is always more favorable than any IRS wage garnishment. It allows you to receive your whole paycheck without fears of future wage garnishments.
IRS Seizures
Unlike the levy which involves intangible assets such as your bank account, a seizure is the taking of physical assets, such as your home or car. Seizures usually happen in aggravated cases when someone ignores many requests by the IRS over a long period of time to pay their outstanding taxes. A Seizure should not be taken lightly. The IRS will ultimately pursue seizure of your physical assets. Don’t think they won’t. Many a newspaper or television show has reported citizens being forced out of their homes after it was sold at an IRS auction, often for as little as half its value. When the IRS seizes your assets they want to quickly sell them at auction. They often get less than half your assets value, so they often seize everything you own including your home, cars, boats, jewelry, motorcycles, insurance polices, and even your retirement funds.
All of the various measures the IRS uses to punish people can be disputed and re-negotiated. Most important, you need a firm with years of experience to negoitate these type of deals. Rink & Robinson, PLLC has an arsenal of tools and a long history of fixing these types of problems to the satisfaction of all involved parties.