As I noted , after 15 years of my resisting taxes, the IRS finally got around to filing a tax lien against me.
This so far has had little practical effect. But the filing amounted to a public notice of my tax debt, and it was noticed by those who prey on such people. I’ve been getting lots of calls from spoofed numbers in the same area code as my phone. I don’t answer, and they almost never leave messages, so I don’t know if they’re scammers trying to impersonate the IRS in order to extort money from me (a common fraud these days) or “pennies on the dollar” tax debt resolution specialists.
yesterday’s mail
I’ve also recently started getting a lot of mail from the latter sort of predator. The photo here shows five letters I got yesterday (Update: I got seven more on ). Most of them try to mimic the look of official notices from the IRS or other governmental offices. One more honest one came from a law office and didn’t try to hide itself. I didn’t open most of them, as they’re all more or less the same thing: invitations to let them negotiate my tax debt with the IRS and promises that they can get the debt dramatically reduced for me (for a fee, of course).
The IRS does have an Offer in Compromise program, which I might qualify for, and which would allow me to settle my tax debt for less, maybe even much less, than I owe. But it would require that I start paying them something, which I’m not prepared to do. So it’s a non-starter.
