The I.R.S. Files a Tax Lien Against Me

I got a certified letter (one I had to sign for) from the IRS today. It announces that the agency has filed a “Federal Tax Lien” with my local county recorder. The lien was prepared on the first of the year but only filed a few days ago.

It covers the unpaid taxes for 2017 and so is intended to extend the lien they filed against me last year for tax years 2007–2016.

I suppose I can expect them to do this each year now. I wonder if I’ll get another flood of junk mail and spam calls from people offering to solve my tax debt problems cheap.

In other news:

• As the British gov­ern­ment flails in its attempts to im­ple­ment Brexit, im­pa­tient “leave” voters are con­tem­plat­ing a tax re­sist­ance cam­paign if their de­ci­sion is not im­ple­ment­ed. One anon­y­mous prop­a­gan­dist for the ef­fort made sure this threat was vis­ible across Sun­der­land.
• The House Joint Committee on Taxation prepared a report on the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” that went into effect last year. The report was designed to to address how the act affects taxpayers at different income levels, but I was mostly interested in the bottom-line, which showed that the law is expected to result in the government bringing in $259,454,000,000 less in federal taxes than it otherwise would have this year.
• The Government Accountability Office is the latest government agency to issue an alarming report about how employee attrition in the enforcement branch of the IRS has led to a dramatic decline in audits and other enforcement activities. (The reaction from Congress? Telling the IRS to hush up about the problem in the hopes that the tax evaders won’t notice. Representative Mike Kelly: “I don’t think that I would want to be a cheerleader, telling those people that don’t want to pay their taxes: ‘Hey, you know what? We are not going to be able to come after you because I don’t have enough money,’ Those comments are better kept internally.”)
• Ruth Benn pens an obit for war tax resister Joffre Stewart.