I hope you have managed to stay safe and well! We focus on resolving tax issues in Prince William County and throughout the lower Northern Virginia area.

Are you behind on filing your federal income tax return or paying your federal IRS taxes in the last year or more? If so, you’re not alone. More than 25 million taxpayers in the U.S. have either failed to file a tax return or are behind in paying their IRS taxes due.

If things have been tight financially, it can be easy to ignore the task of filing and paying your federal taxes to the IRS (We won’t even get into the state taxes due). You might think that you can get caught up “next year” when things get better.  Only, unfortunately, they don’t get better. You skip tax filing again. And maybe again.

Initially, you might think you’ve gotten away with not paying the IRS. But in a year or two, they will catch up with you. While you procrastinate, the penalties and interest will build up to a dollar amount that is way more than what you would have owed if you had filed and paid on time. 

Letters from the IRS will come eventually. If you let it go too long, they can take away your assets.  By then, the penalties and interest will be so high that it will feel like an impossible situation to get out of. 

Here are just a few of the powers that the IRS has to collect your debt:

• The IRS can freeze your bank account and clean out your cash.
• They can garnish your wages, meaning they can take away your paycheck, plus they notify your boss of your IRS debt which can be very embarrassing.
• IRS officers can take away your car, house, boat, and other big assets.
• They can take your retirement fund and garnish part of your social security payment.
• The IRS can restrict your travel by seizing your passport. 
• They can take away your jewelry, including family heirlooms.
• The IRS can take away things like furs, art, and gun collections.
• If you’re self-employed, the IRS can notify your business’s vendors of your debt which can be professionally embarrassing.

Worse, if you’re driven to bankruptcy, there’s a chance it might not end there.  The rules are complicated, but some of your IRS debt may not be forgiven if you declare bankruptcy.

Just the anxiety alone is not worth getting this far behind on your taxes.  You may even be losing sleep over all of these IRS debt problems.  Especially now, everyone needs to keep their stress level low and their immune system in tip-top shape to fight the virus.

You don’t have to face this problem alone. We would be happy to assist you with your representation needs, and are currently helping taxpayers just like you with their tax burdens. Navigating the various remedies at your disposal can be tricky, please feel free to contact us for help with your situation.