IRS collections, tax debt, liens, levies, and what to do when you owe the IRS more than you can pay right now.
On December 4, 2015, President Obama signed into law the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or “FAST Act.” The purpose of the bill was to provide long-term funding for transportation projects, including new highways. Also tucked into the bill were a few new tax laws: one, a requirement that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) use…
As concerns mount over the recent proposal to turn over delinquent tax accounts to private debt collectors, Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Ranking Member John Lewis (D-GA), Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI), and Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) have issued the following statement: It is misguided and harmful…
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. – Winston Churchill Sometimes it feels like the government does this best. Failed policies are often recycled – often many times – in some sort of desperate attempt to make them work. Or to spend taxpayer dollars to promote self-serving agendas. Sometimes it’s…
With two more months left to go in the fiscal year, the feds are on a roll. Tax revenues for the first ten months of the fiscal year topped a record $2,672,414,000,000 (report downloads as a pdf). Those numbers represent almost 8% in growth of tax revenues over those collected in 2014. In pure dollars,…
It can be tempting to crumple up and toss a parking ticket but throwing it away doesn’t make it go away. Parking authorities hold onto their copies of those tickets and those who don’t pay immediately pay up eventually – often through offsets. Just ask Michael Gardner. His state tax refund was garnished by 80%…
Ready to file your federal tax return? If you’re ready to file and make payment, check out these prompt payment options. But what if you can’t pay what you owe? File anyway. Penalties apply for failure to file and failure to pay. To reduce the hit to your wallet from penalties, be sure to file…
If you felt like your wallet was a few dollars lighter this year, you’re likely right. New tax changes which went into effect for the tax year 2013 finally hit taxpayers in 2014: to date, receipts as reported by the Treasury are up for every single month as compared to 2013. So far, the government…
The tax gap in the United States is estimated to be about $385 billion. The tax gap is the difference between what the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) expects to collect in taxes and what they actually collect. That sounds like a lot of money. And I agree that it is. But considering that the IRS…
A Washington Post story focusing on the seizure of tax refunds by the government to repay debt that was, in some instances, decades old has attracted attention. Of interest is the authority to seize tax refunds to pay back certain obligations.
Taxes From A To Z: G Is For Garnished Wages.