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IRS can take up to 80% of your take-home pay from every single paycheck once your employer receives that notice.
When your paycheck gets levied, you can talk to IRS on the telephone in an effort to get them to release that levy. Automated Collection Service (ACS) is the IRS group that will most likely handle your phone call. ACS employees who deal with the general public have been trained by IRS to attempt to resolve unpaid tax issues with people who call them.
These ACS representatives are friendly and well-trained. However, they also are tasked with the responsibility of collecting unpaid taxes from everyone who comes their way. ACS employees are located in several locations across the country and are all reached with the same telephone number. If you call ACS and speak to a rep and later call ACS on a following occasion, you will not be able to speak to the same person you spoke to previously. In fact, you may not even reach the same location (city) you reached earlier.
Due to this nature of the ACS system, no written notes or records are kept by ACS employees. Although you may be asked to fax or mail in documents to them, those documents will be used to make notes in your computer file on the ACS computer system; your paperwork will then typically be shredded. During your call and immediately afterward, the ACS rep who handled your call will make notes in your computer file so that future ACS reps will have access to that information.
ACS reps can request that you provide them with a lot of personal and financial information, including:
| Name(s) | Copies of 3 months pay stubs | Housing & utility costs |
| Address | Copies of 3 months bank statements | Medical expenses |
| Social Security Numbers | All income sources | Auto operating costs |
| All employers | Child support/alimony received/paid | Auto payments |
| All bank accounts | Social Security/Retirement income | Child & dependent care |
| Automobiles owned | Payroll taxes | Court ordered payments |
| Real estate owned | Other pay stub deductions | Other monthly expenses |
You can see that IRS will want to know just about everything about you and your financial condition. That's why they call this "taking your Financial Information."
Your IRS telephone interviewer will input all of this information into the ACS computer system for future reference, so make sure you get it right the first time.
The ACS computer system is programmed to make calculations and computations using your actual financial information plus a lot of other information that they use on each and every taxpayer who calls them.
The way ACS makes its computations and then analyzes your particular situation is a bit complicated to understand if you're not familiar with it. But keep in mind these very important facts:
| 1. | IRS is the boss. When confusion or disagreements arise between you and IRS, please refer to this fact. | |
| 2. | Calculations are made according to IRS requirements. | |
| 3. | Their calculations will determine your exact Financial Condition and your ability to pay anything on your old taxes. | |
| 4. | Their calculations will include much of your own personal Financial Information plus some of their own numbers. | |
| 5. | Some of your monthly expenses may be completely allowed by IRS in determining your Financial Condition. | |
| 6. | Some of your monthly expenses may be completely disallowed by IRS in determining your Financial Condition. | |
| 7. | Some of your monthly expenses may be limited to maximum allowable amounts by IRS. | |
| 8. | Some of your monthly expenses may be completely determined by IRS bases on their own criteria. | |
| 9. | All of these Allowable Monthly Expenses will be deducted from your Monthly Income to determine what IRS | |
| calls your Monthly Net Cash Flow. | ||
| 10. | Your Monthly Net Cash Flow will then be used to determine your "ability to pay" your old taxes. | |
| 11. | Your Monthly Net Cash Flow will usually then become the monthly payment that IRS will want you to make to them. | |
So much of your own particular tax matter will depend on your Monthly Cash Flow that if you talk to ACS an you are not informed and educated about it and are not prepared for their questions and resulting requirements, that you can easily cause yourself some damage.
Please contact us if you want to discuss this matter.