IRS tax debt situations
Tax debt arrives in a handful of recognisable shapes. Each page below states the one thing that most changes what you do in that situation, then points at the notices, options and terms that belong to it.
None of them will tell you which situation you are in. That is not something a page can know, and the pages that pretend to are the ones this site has spent its short life removing.
Federal Tax Lien
A claim against everything you own, and the public notice that makes it visible.
Unfiled Returns
What the IRS does when returns are missing, and why filing usually comes before any payment arrangement.
Self-Employed and Independent Contractor Tax Debt
Why balances build differently without withholding, and which penalty catches it.
Business Tax Debt
Where the business notices differ from the individual ones, and where the difference is not published.
Payroll and Trust Fund Tax Debt
The area where a company debt can become a personal one. Describable; not assessable.
Financial Hardship
What the IRS means by hardship, who decides it, and what it does and does not stop.
Multiple Tax Periods
Why several years is not one problem, and where the per-period distinctions bite.
Collection Timing and the CSED
How long the IRS has, what pauses the clock, what is added on top — and why not to compute it yourself.
Wage Garnishment
A continuous levy on pay. What is exempt, how the exempt amount is set, and the three-day statement that decides it.
Bank Levy
A one-time attachment to what was in the account. The 21-day window, and the word the IRS hedges with.
Federal Payment Levy Program
A levy that runs automatically against Social Security and other federal payments, continuing on each payment rather than acting once.
Living or Working Abroad With IRS Debt
Mail that has to cross a border, a collection clock that can run longer, and two reporting duties the IRS treats as separate from any tax owed.
Deceased Taxpayer and Estate Tax Debt
What Publication 559 states about filing the final return, who is personally on the hook, and the two forms that can end that exposure.
Identity Theft Affecting an Open Collection Case
What the IRS states to do when a balance-due notice and a stolen identity arrive at the same time.
Where the detail lives
These pages route rather than explain. The notices carry what a specific letter says and what it asks of you, the resolution options carry what the IRS publishes about each route, and the glossary carries the vocabulary. Every one of those records has its own sources and its own review date.