Tax relief FAQ

First, find your most recent IRS notice and get your account transcript so you know the real balance and which years are involved. Second, file any missing returns, because no resolution program is available while required returns are unfiled. Then compare your options: a payment plan, penalty relief, hardship status, or a settlement, based on what the IRS formula says you can pay. Above $10,000 the IRS can also file a federal tax lien, so acting before the next notice matters.

Yes, but through specific programs with strict math, not blanket forgiveness. An offer in compromise can settle debt for less when your income, expenses, and assets show you cannot pay in full before the collection statute runs out. Penalty abatement can remove penalties, hardship status can pause collection, and balances the IRS fails to collect within its 10-year statute generally expire. Nobody can promise forgiveness before running your numbers.

Fresh Start was a real set of IRS policy changes, begun in 2011 and 2012, that raised lien thresholds and made payment plans and offers in compromise easier to get. It is not a new program you enroll in, and ads that treat it like a limited-time amnesty are marketing. The underlying options, installment agreements, offers in compromise, and penalty relief, are permanent parts of IRS collection.

Generally 10 years from the date the tax was assessed, under Internal Revenue Code section 6502. This deadline is called the collection statute expiration date, or CSED. Certain events pause the clock, including bankruptcy, a pending offer in compromise, and time spent outside the country, so the real date requires reading your transcript.

An installment agreement lets you pay your balance monthly instead of all at once, and most balances under the streamlined thresholds can be set up without submitting full financials. Penalties and interest keep accruing while you pay, though the failure-to-pay penalty rate drops once an agreement is in place. The key is choosing a payment you can sustain, because a defaulted agreement restarts collection.

The failure-to-file penalty is generally 5% of the unpaid tax per month, capped at 25%. The failure-to-pay penalty is 0.5% per month, also capped at 25%, and interest compounds daily on top. Because filing late costs ten times more per month than paying late, you should file on time even when you cannot pay.

Often, yes. First-time abatement can erase failure-to-file and failure-to-pay penalties for a year if you have a clean compliance history for the prior three years. Reasonable cause relief is available when circumstances like serious illness or disaster prevented compliance. Interest is rarely removed on its own, but it recalculates downward when the penalties it grew on are abated.

A lien is a legal claim against your property that protects the government's interest; it does not take anything by itself. A levy is the actual seizure: the IRS taking money from a bank account or other property. A wage garnishment is a levy applied to your paycheck, where your employer must send part of each check to the IRS until the levy is released. Liens secure the debt; levies and garnishments collect it.

Yes. A garnishment is released when you get into a resolution such as an installment agreement, prove economic hardship, or resolve the underlying balance. Before it ever starts, the IRS must send a final notice of intent to levy, which gives you 30 days to request a collection due process hearing that pauses levy action. Acting inside that window is far easier than unwinding a garnishment already in place.

The IRS may file a substitute for return on your behalf, which uses none of your deductions and usually overstates what you owe, then starts collecting on that inflated balance. Filing your own accurate returns replaces those numbers and is required before any payment plan or settlement is available. IRS policy generally looks for the last six years of returns to consider you compliant, though your situation can require more or fewer.

Withheld payroll taxes are treated as trust funds: money held for employees, not the business. When a company fails to pay them, the IRS can assess the trust fund recovery penalty personally against anyone who was responsible for paying and willfully did not, including founders and officers. That makes the debt survive the business, which is why interviews about who controlled the money should never be handled without representation.

Fees vary with the complexity of the case: how many years, whether returns are unfiled, whether a business or payroll tax is involved, and which program fits. Simple cases cost far less than multi-year business cases. Be wary of any firm that quotes a settlement amount or a flat outcome before investigating your finances, because qualification is decided by an IRS formula no salesperson has run yet.

The programs are real: installment agreements, offers in compromise, penalty abatement, and hardship status are all standard IRS procedures anyone can read about at IRS.gov. What varies is the industry around them, which includes both legitimate practitioners and firms that charge large upfront fees on promises they cannot keep. Legitimate help investigates first, quotes in writing, and never guarantees an outcome the IRS has not approved.

Any IRS letters you have, most recent first, plus a rough idea of your total balance, the years involved, and whether any returns are unfiled. Recent income and expense figures help too. You do not need everything to start; the point of the consultation is to figure out what matters in your case.

No. A consultation only needs a picture of your situation: roughly what you owe, what kind of tax it is, and where collection stands. Never submit your SSN or bank details through a website form, ours included. Sensitive information comes into play later, through secure channels, only if you engage a firm to represent you.