Resolving IRS Garnishment and Other Tax Problems in Connecticut

Being the richest state per capita, Connecticut residents are facing the most difficulties when it comes to dealing with the Internal Revenue Service to get their tax problems resolved. This means that people in Connecticut are earning more money per individual than any other state in the United States. Therefore, if the IRS person who handles the tax issues is from another state, say Ohio, people will find very difficult to make them understand that earning $60,000 per annum will not make someone in Connecticut rich.

Since the fallout from the 2008 Wall Street crisis, Connecticut has been really struggling to regain its foothold. Also the dwelling cost continues to be increasing every year in the state and the local people were finding it hard to cope with it. To make the matter worse, taxes has been increased manifold as the government is paying more taxes per capita to maintain the states' quality lifestyle. But the fact is; we too have several poor people residing in the local towns whose earnings are much less that not even qualify for the taxes.

However the IRS is going after the taxpayers regardless of whether they reside in distressed areas like Bristol or in well-off metropolitan areas like Madison.

So if you contact an IRS agent for getting help with the release of an IRS tax levy or garnishment, you may not get the best solution from them since not every agent knows the actual costs of living in your city and exactly how much tax you can afford.

The IRS employees are trained to build strong cases against taxpayers who do not know about how to get their levy released and where to turn for tax relief help.  And this is where you the need the guidance of an expert tax lawyer. These tax specialists will try every possible way to transfer your case to one of the two Connecticut appeal offices- East Hartford and New Haven. This is important because a local agent will get to know about your financial situation and can provide the best decision on the levy/garnishment release.

After the case is moved to one of the Connecticut IRS appeals locations, the next job of a professional IRS negotiator is to prove as many expenditures as possible are essential living expenses. To make this happen, the tax attorney will do lot of negotiation with the IRS employee. And even more so, there should be no lies. The IRS will stop negotiating with the taxpayer if they discover anything deemed unethical in the financial statements and will also initiate legal measures against them.

To put it succinctly, the taxpayer have to make efforts to ensure that the case is handled by the local appeal officials in order to get garnishment release in the state of Connecticut. Then a clear explanation should be made about the financial obligations and the amount that the taxpayer can afford to pay each month without defaulting.

What You Need To Do When the IRS Garnishes Your Bank Account

If you think that the money in the bank account is going to be safe from the IRS, then you are completely wrong. It is a nightmare situation – You’re at the ATM. To your great shock, you aren't able to withdraw the cash. Your balance shows negative. You rush to the bank only to find that your account is under IRS bank levy and you receive a copy of levy notice letter from them. You are totally shattered.

Do not think that you cannot come out of this levy. As a tax attorney, I can assure that for each and every tax problem, there is a solution. In-fact, there's no such thing as a hopeless tax case. The next few paragraphs will tell you how.

1. The Internal Revenue Service has enforced a levy but the cash in your account will not go immediately to the government.  The bank will freeze your money for a three week period from the date of levy after which only it will be transferred to the IRS. So within this time period, you need to do the negotiations with the IRS and request for the money to be returned to your bank-account. This is called as levy release.

2. The IRS could possibly ask various details such as your previous tax returns, the amount withheld from your salary for income tax and also your estimated tax payments. There are exceptions to the regular practices, so the IRS employee is not the last word.

3. You will need to complete a form which IRS uses to capture your financial situation. This form is referred to as Collection Information Statement and from this the IRS will know exactly how to garnish you in the future, including other bank accounts and the wages. So utmost care has to be taken about the information you are going to provide to the IRS.

4. In case your application is denied, you have the right to appeal against IRS enforcement actions. There are two main appeal processes- Collection Appeals Program or CAP and Collection Due Process. Most IRS actions related to tax collection can be appealed with the CAP process. Not only that, Collection Appeals Program provides taxpayer a higher success rate  when compared to other programs like Audit Appeals, Offer in Compromise and Collection Due Process. You know what, IRS publishes a rule book called Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) to guide their agents and it gets regularly updated by the federal government. But IRS employees has a hard time with this book since it is very complicated and many times, they miss to follow the rules exactly right during the tax collection process.  Here we use this effectively to win the CAP appeal by pinpointing the mistakes and the rules that was not followed by the IRS agents to the appeals officer.  When it is shown with supported documents, the appeal officer will reverse the IRS levy enforcement and your garnishment gets released.

5. You got a garnishment relief. However it doesn’t mean you can relax yourself forever since a levy release is often temporary. It is just a start of your representation. It's best to immediately begin work towards getting a permanent solution. Every cloud has a silver lining so it's time for you to analyze the choices available. To stop the bank levy permanently, settle your tax debts as soon as possible or take the alternate steps that is available to you. Otherwise, don' get surprised to see many more IRS garnishments on your hard earned money.