Procedural Objections

• If you intend to pay your tax debt soon and simply wish to stall the IRS, you should review your communications with the IRS to find out if it complied with its own procedures. Before a tax lien can be placed on your property, the IRS must send you a Notice and Demand for Payment, wait ten days for you to pay, send you a Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing, and wait 30 more days for you to pay. If the IRS failed to comply with these procedures, contact them and demand that they release the lien immediately. The IRS will simply begin the process again, but you will have a few more weeks in which to either pay the debt or make other arrangements.
  
  

Filing for a Hearing

• If you want a hearing, use IRS Form 12153, Request for a Collection Due Process or Equivalent Hearing, to demand one. If you wish to preserve the right to appeal an adverse IRS decision to a court, you will have to demand a hearing within 30 days of the date printed on your Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing.
  
  

Hearing Procedures

• In order to prevail at a hearing, you will have to state and document appropriate grounds. Appropriate grounds include an IRS error (if, for example, the tax debt is owned by your ex-spouse and not you), expiration of the ten-year statute of limitations on collections, and bankruptcy (which will entitle you to postponement of the lien). A particularly convincing argument would be that the IRS has levied against your business property, rendering it more difficult for you to pay your taxes. You may use an attorney at your hearing, or you may represent yourself. If you can't afford an attorney, you should contact a Low Income Tax Clinic.
  
  

Appeals

• The Internal Revenue Code contains rather complex rules on how to determine the forum for your appeal and how much time you have to file it. In some cases you will need to appeal to the Tax Court (independent of the IRS), while in other cases you will need to file your appeal to the Federal District Court with jurisdiction over the property that is subject to the lien. If you appeal to the federal district court and lose, you can try to appeal with the federal circuit court.
  
  

Alternatives

• If you do not dispute the underlying tax debt and would rather negotiate with the IRS rather than challenge them, several options are available. You can offer an installment payment plan, which the IRS is likely to grant if your income indicates that you will be able to make payments. You may also ask for Status 53, which is an IRS suspension of collection activity for a specified time (typically two or three years). With proper grounds you may make an Offer in Compromise, which is an offer to settle your tax debt for less than the full amount owed.