There’s nothing more shocking than expecting a pay check only to find that you were hit with an IRS wage levy. The IRS will levy your wages if they have sent you a Final Notice of Intent to Levy via Certified Mail (a letter 1058) and you fail to pay your liability or fail to file an Appeal called a Request for Collection Due Process Hearing.
A Request for a Collection Due Process hearing must be requested in writing within 30 days of the date on the Final Notice of Intent to Levy.
So what do you do if you find out on pay day that you aren’t getting a paycheck? Well…the first thing that needs to be done is to determine if you have met all of your filing requirements. What’s that mean? It means do you have any outstanding returns that need to be filed? If you do, then you have to get them filed asap. It adds insult to injury that you often don’t have any money to get those returns prepared because they just took your pay check but that’s how it works.
Next, it’s a good idea to have some solution in mind. Do you want an Installment Agreement how much do you want to pay? It’s been my experience that what you want to pay is less than what the IRS wants you to pay.
Your best bet to getting an IRS wage levy lifted is to avoid getting one in the first place.
If not an Installment Agreement, then what? You may want to file an Offer in Compromise. But it’s probably a little late for that. It’s unlikely that the IRS will release the Wage Levy just on your promise that you will file an Offer in Compromise. At any rate, the IRS is going to want to go through your monthly income and monthly allowable expenses to determine how much you should be paying them on a monthly basis. A wage levy is an ongoing levy meaning if you don’t do something to get it released, it will continue until either the liability is paid or the collection statute date expires.
The bottom line is that wage levies are nasty. They come at the worst times imaginable. Don’t procrastinate until the IRS files a wage levy against you. It’s better to be proactive when all of your options are still open.
If you have questions about wage levies or anything related to IRS Problems, Call us at (888) 438-6474.