[JoeC]

Originally Posted by extrashaky

I never suggested they would throw you in jail. Tax offices are more insidious than that.

What they do instead is declare that you owe them taxes and penalties and send you a letter demanding you pay it. If you ignore it, or they sent the demand to an old address so you don't even know about it, they enter a judgment against you for a tax lien.

Once that happens, they go to work finding your bank accounts. And they CAN find them. Then they just take the money out of your account. By the time your bank mails you the lien notification, the money is already gone, and then it's up to you to fight to get it back if you didn't owe it. Either way, your account is suddenly shorter than you expected.

You say, "But! Due process! Fourth Amendment!" And they laugh and tell you that you got your due process when they sent the letter to your previous address that you never received. They don't even have to go to court to have a judgment entered against you.

If there's not enough in the bank to cover the lien, that judgment will come back to haunt you if you own property and try to sell it. Suddenly the tax office will be there taking a chunk of your proceeds to cover the lien. Tax liens are part of the search every real estate settlement agent does before closing on your sale, and the transaction can't close until it's resolved.

Some states might put a lien on the vehicle, but when Fairfax County in Virginia came after me they just stole it right out of my checking account. I got it back, but not without a fight and a delay of about four months. Your comment about the BRZ being a small fish made me laugh. The amount Fairfax said I owed was only $400 for vehicle registration. It cost them almost nothing to steal it from me. It's easy revenue, because most people don't even fight it.

At least I could fight mine. You'd just be screwed since you actually dodged the taxes. If you decided to hire legal representation to fight it, you'd run into problems there also. Attorneys don't like to take on tax liens because people who don't pay their taxes also tend to not pay their attorneys. You would end up paying more up front for a lawyer than if you just paid the taxes.

And the worst part of all is that the tax liens seem to come at you years after the actual debt. When Fairfax came after me, I hadn't lived in Virginia in years. Alabama did the same thing to me five years after I had moved away ($1300). Louisiana tried ($600), but somehow their notice that went to my old New Orleans address got forwarded to me in Texas even though my mail forwarding had expired, and I was able to call up and raise hell with them before it got to the point of stealing from my accounts.

So maybe you think you're selling this car now and will be out from under it, but that doesn't mean you will. You might. Or it might just be a ticking time bomb that years from now says "Poof!" and disappears money right out of your bank.

wow! that's crazy to hear that they can just take money right out of your accounts!

Am I reading correctly that this has happened to you multiple times???