Federal Tax Lien
Categories: Tax, Regulations
Anyone out there looking for another reason to pay their taxes, we've got you. Gather ‘round; it’s story time.
Once upon a time, in a land somewhere in the United States, a guy named Guy owned a house. And one day Guy decided he didn’t want to pay his taxes anymore. “Nope,” he said, “no taxes for me.” He ignored the letters and phone calls from the IRS and went skipping merrily to work and home, until all of a sudden, one day, he came home to find a notice stuck to his front door. It was a public document stating that the federal government now had a legal claim on Guy’s house.
OMG, Guy, what happened?! Well, we’ll tell you.
That document is what’s known as a federal tax lien, and basically, it says that if we don’t pay our taxes, the government is going to take what they are owed from us via our personal property. Our real estate, financial accounts, and other valuable possessions are all subject to federal tax liens. If we try to sell personal property that has a lien on it, the IRS will take whatever we owe out of the sale price. Liens can be placed on a business, too, if said business is delinquent on its taxes. Liens can negatively affect our credit, our ability to take out loans, and even our ability to refinance credit cards we already have. In other words, liens can wreak havoc on our financial lives and are generally bad news and totally un-fun.
The best way to avoid getting into a federal tax lien situation is to—surprise!—pay our taxes in full and on time. But if we do find ourselves in a bit of a lien pickle, a financial advisor should be able to help us figure out how to get through it.
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Finance: What's the Difference Between F...145 Views
Finance, a la Shmoop. [title page] What's the difference between federal
and state taxes? All right, well, when the U.S. came together a quarter of a
millennium ago, it was the United States. See, right there in the title you get a [founding fathers pictured]
sense of the tension. We started out as just states. These things. Then, we came together [individual states on map]
and created a central government that kind of sort of had control over each of [government tries to control states]
the states, and well, you can imagine that not everyone agreed about every rule.
Some states wanted murder to be an offense punishable by death, while other [protesters picket]
states wanted it to be, you know, legal. Well, okay maybe not legal, but they
had different ideas about how you should deal with murderers... i.e., not all of them [person pushed into lion pit]
should be thrown into the lion pit. Anyway, this was all well and good when it just
involved local laws and customs. Local customs dictated local laws, and then
local taxes could be allocated accordingly. So they could pay for things [local laws and taxes diagram]
like a bouncy house for the mayor. But what happened when there was a threat of [mayor in bounce house]
military invasion? Well, what if Georgia wanted to fight
them commies, but North Carolina didn't? Yeah, that didn't work out so well. So [states argue over military]
for some things, there has to be a federal law that supersedes state law
and federal taxes that support those laws, like military spending. If only those [federal laws and taxes diagram]
pacifists in Maryland didn't want to spend money on guns, well, then what would
the rest of the country do? Yep, let Maryland start speaking Russian or [Maryland hippies hang out]
Chinese as the preferred language while the rest of the nation just watched [Maryland conquered]
while sipping their tea? Or in the United States' case, you know, eating doughnuts? Yeah. [Americans eat doughnuts]
So, military spending protects the entire country, and those expenses come out of [military budget chart]
federal taxes. National highways? Federal. Border Patrol? Federal. Space travel? [federal and local laws/taxes demonstrated]
Federal. Schools? State. Libraries? State. Little country roads? State... local.
You know... Or even smaller in the form of county
taxes as we get littler and littler... yeah. So federal taxes pay for all the big
stuff--the things that we share as unified Americans no matter what state
we live in, while state taxes pay for stuff particular interest to our little
local state, wherever it is. You know, like DC taxes aren't going to be used to
build a fire department in Minnesota. Stuff like that. [fire department in Minnesota]
Besides, Washington has their, you know, own fires to put out. [newscaster speaks]