Hello Anthony. Hello Claudine. So today we want to talk about IRS seizures. We have people
contact us quite a bit and they're concerned with good reason I think. So we want to talk
about how does an IRS seizure happen? Will they take your house? If they do take your
property can you get it back? And then what about if your property is overseas? So let's
start with the basics. How does an IRS seizure happen? What are the chances of them actually
taking someone's house? Okay so I think first we have to sort of figure out how the IRS
works generally. There needs to be a tax debt. Okay first thing whether or not you file that
return yourself or if the IRS does it for you with that substitute file return mechanism
or with an audit. So there's a tax debt then the IRS makes an attempt to collect. They
may make an attempt with their automated processes or what will happen in order for
a seizure to happen a field agent needs to be assigned and that's a revenue officer.
So and all those attempts to collect must have failed. Now will the revenue officer come
out to you personally? Yes for a seizure. Yes now something to be that there's a terms
of art. A seizure is a specific thing. Some people think that when the IRS seizes a bank
account that's a seizure. Well it's really not. It's a levy. That's what a levy is when
the IRS takes part of your pay or payment from a vendor of yours that too is a levy.
Some people call it a garnishment but to the IRS it is a levy. A levy is a different process
that a levy can happen automatically through automatic processes. A seizure is something
when levies don't work and now a revenue officer has to get involved. Okay so what I mean after
the revenue officer comes out I mean do they just tell you we're taking your stuff or?
Well you know in order for it to happen that you in order for seizures to happen look the
seizures are a ton of work for revenue officers and there's half the revenue officers that
used to be. So they really really don't want to do a seizure. Okay. So they'll boil in
to work with you. So seizures happen when people get cute. Maybe they are doing things
that aren't exactly legal. Okay. Maybe they're being antagonistic. A seizure of a house will
happen when it's rare. Somebody would have to be living in a rather extravagant house
thumbing their nose at the IRS telling them I'm never going to pay you a thing. Okay.
That sort of thing which is going to motivate a revenue officer to do a whole bunch of work
they prefer not to do. Sometimes you do get revenue officers who just get you know an idea
about a taxpayer that I think this taxpayers a bad person whatever reason that does happen
they don't have all the complete facts and so they might sort of come down hard and I've
seen that happen where the weirdest things could set off a revenue officer that they
saw the taxpayer drove a Volvo so they were very rich and I drive a Volvo they're nice
cars but you know. Now what about the article we saw last week there was an X IRS employee
lying about their assets. Right. So that's sort of where a seizure could happen too.
So there was an X IRS employee who was doing I guess what we do some of the tax resolution
work. He also had some very cute ways. He ran up allegedly because I don't think he pled
guilty to this but 90 percent of the cases there's going to be a plea agreement. Allegedly
he hid income his own income he didn't report his income and then when the IRS did say hey
you owe us some money he took steps to lie on a financial statement. And so as you know
if I was the IRS revenue agent who were revenue officers who saw this lie I'd be ecstatic
because I said finally I can get rid of you because now you've given me a great case I'm
going to refer you over to criminal investigations. You've lied on a form. Now I don't need to
bother with you anymore and now the whole full brunt of this is no longer civil. Now it's
criminal where it's a you know usually people do three years is a common is a common time
and now the revenue officer close the case out because that's really their goal. Their
goal is can I close this case out and get my manager to give me a thumbs up. That thumbs
up really doesn't have anything to do with the money collected because if we'll show
you some of the auctions going on right now and I would say the reason why they're doing
it is simply to close out the case because the values not there. Now let's say they do
sell your property. Does that money just go right towards your tax debt or what do they
do with that. Well first it has to go to the cost of doing the sale and then it goes to
the tax debt. OK. Yeah. OK. Now you mentioned the auction. Yes. Yes. So the auction is
pretty interesting. So you'll find the auctions at the treasury dot gov auction slash IRS
slash index and so I'm on that right now. And this is you know not the fanciest website
you'll ever see. We have basically two pictures on the front right now. We have a nice little
I guess that would be a bungalow in Missouri. I like I like the look of that sort of craftsman
style. And then there's a Winnebago on there too in 1998. This is this is sort of where
I think it is helpful to to sort of recognize. Here's a 1998 Winnebago motor home. OK. Now
I can't tell if those wheels are recessed or if the wheels are missing. But regardless
and you can see the little notice that the IRS revenue is put on here to say this is
subject to seizure. You can imagine that the amount of time the revenue officer is going
to put in this for a 1998 Winnebago 20 year old motor home that we don't even know what
shape it's in. Have no idea what shape it's in. It looks like it predates all the slide
outs and all the fancy dancing things. Right. You know what are you really going to get
for that. Maybe it has has little miles twenty thousand. Most of them do have little miles
using your daily commuter. It says excellent condition but still at auction. What would
you get for that five thousand dollars. Maybe. That's what I would say. So we can go to their
minimum bid and their minimum bid is six thousand. So OK. So six thousand dollars is probably
what it will go for. And this is in Cambridge Minnesota. So you think this is a taxpayer
thumbing their nose at the IRS. It could be a taxpayer who's deceased. Oh there's nothing
else to go after. And the group manager for the revenue officer said hey look you got
to do something. It's there. We should take it. So it could be like that. It could potentially
be a taxpayer saying well I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to hide. It's taken
off and well I still thought you know I you still have this. I have to do this when you
know the you know when we go through the cost and the the amount that's actually going to
be applied to tax taxpayers. It's it's totally not worth it. It's just something you have
to do. You just can't let a taxpayer get away with it. You have to go through the trouble.
So it's something where you know now the other thing too is the taxpayer saw this to say
hey look you said your minimum bid is going to be six thousand dollars on this. There's
no way you're going to get it. You could present a reason to say this thing's worth you know
two thousand dollars and I'll give you two thousand dollars if you go away. Oh and that
would you know for a revenue officer would the revenue officer rather sell this at six
thousand dollars at an auction or get two thousand dollars cash money. They want that
cash money. So that's the other thing too. Don't don't just sit there and take it because
the auction is sort of a bad deal for everybody I guess except the person buying it at the
auction might be get who might be but who knows because you because there's a lot of
uncertainty. The but the the seizure is a bad deal for the revenue officer way too much
work. It's a bad deal for the taxpayer because what they're going to get for the property
is not going to be what what they would get if they put a little effort into selling it
on Craigslist or something. Right. Just take something and then give it to the revenue
officer but you're less likely to get murdered by the IRS. All right so let's see the IRS
does seizure property. Can you get it back. Yes you can. Now you know it's interesting
what is on the IRS website and what happens in reality. They say oh yes you can get it
back and here's the reasons why you can get it back. You paid the property the amount
you owed. The period for collection ended prior to the seizure being issued. Releasing
the seizure will help you pay your taxes. You entered into an agreement and the terms
of the agreement do not allow for the seizure to continue. The seizure creates an economic
hardship meaning the IRS has determined the seizure prevents you from being basic reasonable
living expenses or the value of the property is more than the amount owed and releasing
the seizure will not hinder our ability to collect the amount of. Now there's I'm going
to say there's one two three of those things are sort of a hard standard but a bunch of
them are sort of subjective. They're very subjective. So who determines whether or not
that's true or not because releasing the seizure will help you pay your taxes. So the arguments
like hey if you don't take my Winnebago I'll be able to sell it my own and give you more
money and sell it. And then the revenue officer could say I don't believe you. Right. No because
I gave you an opportunity for you. And so now I'll just go ahead and seize that. And
with the you know now with economic hardship the seizure creates an economic hardship meaning
the IRS has determined the seizure prevents you from meeting basic reasonable living expenses.
This applies in primary residences. And you could say that for instance let's say that
the has happened when people live in extravagant homes it's their primary residence. The IRS
looks to seize it because it's like well you don't need you know you don't need a million
dollar home to live in. You could live in a two hundred thousand dollar home. Right.
And for that kind of home they wouldn't bother when you get up to a million dollars they're
saying hmm kind of luxury living here. And it's bigger house than theirs. So that's what's
most impure eating. So that's where you know the argument you said well you can't seize
my home because if you see almost seize my primary home that's a million dollars. Where
am I going to live. And they'll say well what you could do is you could sell that home and
now buy a more modest home we won't bother you about. Just give us the additional proceeds
from from that. But what happened before is like the usually the revenue officer has
already tried that. I already told you that that would be the IRS you know the revenue
officers can't always tell you exactly what to do. But they could say this is what's going
to happen. So you figure out the solution to it. So I've given you ample opportunity
to sell this on your own and find something reasonable to live in. But you're creating
a self-induced hardship. And I've just done all this work that I didn't want to do. I
really didn't want to do. And so now you're claiming hardship when it's really it was yeah
you do have our chip now you're absolutely right you do. But we're going to keep it that
way. And so that could be difficult to undo. And you know cases like this we've worked we've
even gotten them to say OK one more try because they really don't want to do it. And then
we've had people not fulfill what they said they were going to do. It's just this sort
of you know some people they they have just some some patterns that they can't break out
of. Yep. All right. So what if your property is overseas. Can the IRS sees property that
isn't in the United States. You know the IRS could take a judgment they have against you
and bring that overseas to enforce it. There's overseas judge judgments can be enforced overseas.
But there's a few things that would have to happen. Now there are some there are some
limited examples where the IRS has a mutual enforcement agreement. But that's not really
talking about because those are more of levies of bank accounts are not seizing property.
So what the IRS would have to do is have some judgment the US judgment now bring it to that
foreign country to enforce it. And people do this all the time with their own judgments
to say oh you thought you were going to hide your money here. Well no because I hired an
attorney there to go after you. And you know basically you know kind of the facts demonstrate
the person trying to go after maybe not be the most savory person. So hey what do you
know you got the property. Likewise the IRS could do that. But they have some real real
significant problems. You know in the US the US court systems favor the IRS. You know that's
there. It's their home turf some of the things they could do without a court order. So that's
pretty nice. You don't really have to worry about a judge giving you a hard time if there's
no judge. Right. That's pretty nice. But when you go overseas you're going to deal with
somebody who is not necessarily on your team and somebody with the recent foreign account
tax compliance act in the real heavy hand the IRS has had enforcing their will globally.
They have such a terrible reputation very much hated. I mean despised because they have
this power to sort of ruin foreign banks. And I'll talk a little bit more about that
in a second. These these jurisdictions just simply don't want to deal with you. So you
can get lost. And also a lot of jurisdictions have homestead exemptions that are going to
sort of not make anything you have. Attachable. Now what would be different. Now where we
would say things get different is if you happen to be somebody where there's a lot of allegations.
Some might be true. Maybe you're in the press. Maybe you're in some of the press. You know
just say you're an international drug lord or something like that. The IRS has a seizure
against some of your property overseas. Well there look that foreign country doesn't have
the resources maybe to prosecute you. So they could say well yeah sure I ask you guys going
to come in here and take care of this problem for us too. That's when it's going to happen
when that country you're in doesn't like you either. That's when you would say maybe this
is this plan isn't going to work out. So there is a chance but it's very minute. Very minute
and that's that's really a big criticism of we have this foreign account tax compliance
act that's imposing penalties around people eight million eight nine million people around
the U.S. people around the globe are subject to these penalties. It's like so they're living
around the world. What now. So what do you do now. Now that you've imposed these penalties
that are ridiculous. This person can just say well I don't have anything in the U.S.
so go pound sand and there's really nothing to do. So all you're doing is creating these
these liabilities that just are never going to be enforced and they're more just a burden
around someone's neck but you're not really ever going to collect money on that. Now the
thing they can do now this is the thing they can do is they could take your passport if
it's over $50,000. So that's some nasty little leverage they have there but for a lot of people
not all but a lot of them already have that other that other passports you know they have
another country's passports like OK I'll really miss my U.S. passport and the thing is they
see your U.S. passport doesn't mean you can't travel to the U.S. to visit on your other
passport. There's not some sort of thing well your U.S. passport was taken so we're going
to take your Swiss passport. No doesn't work like that sorry you can you don't have that
authority. So the thing to remember is there's this foreign account tax compliance act that
foreign banks have to comply with and you would say well Anthony that sort of goes against
your whole thing where you say other countries in the world don't want to deal with the IRS.
You're right that's true because but the difference here is that the leverage that the IRS has
on these foreign banks is payments in the U.S. that if they don't like what you're doing
over there we're going to withhold any payments coming from a bank to you 30 percent 30 percent.
So that could be just you know that's a global economy and so much of the economy flows through
the U.S. at some point you could destroy a bank fairly quickly with that. So that's the
one they're doing it. They OK it's like OK you got the leverage on this OK we'll do it
but you don't have the leverage on that so have fun. Yep. Good luck. Yeah. All right
well if you are concerned about a tax debt or your passport or any of your property being
seized levies or leans don't hesitate to contact us 888-727-8796. You can email info at irasmedic.com.
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