How to Stop IRS Wage Garnishment (2025)
If you’re facing IRS wage garnishment, you may feel confused, angry, and overwhelmed. But you have options! Learn how to stop the IRS garnishing your wages.
Owe the IRS more than you can pay? There are rules for what the IRS will accept. We know them.
Penalties and interest compound, notices escalate, and eventually the IRS takes the money from a bank account or a paycheck. The good news is that collection runs on published rules: what the IRS will accept, from whom, and when. Our attorneys run those rules against your numbers first, stop the levy, and put the right arrangement in place.
Call (847) 580-1279 or use the form for a confidential consultation.
A settlement for less than the full balance, accepted when your offer equals or exceeds what the IRS calculates it could collect: the equity in your assets plus your disposable income over 12 or 24 months. Most rejected offers were simply below that number. We run the calculation before applying, and if you will not qualify, we tell you and use a different tool. How the Offer in Compromise works
Removes your liability for tax, penalties, and interest caused by a spouse’s or former spouse’s errors on a joint return, in three forms depending on whether you knew, whether you benefited, and whether you are now separated. Most requests must be filed within two years of the first collection action against you. Innocent spouse relief
Failure-to-file and failure-to-pay penalties, and the interest on them, are removed for taxpayers with a clean three-year history through First Time Abate and its successor, Automatic Exemption from Penalty. Other penalties, including accuracy-related and foreign information return penalties, are removed for reasonable cause with a documented request. Penalty abatement
When your income does not cover the IRS’s allowable living expenses, collection is paused. Interest continues and the account is reviewed periodically, but the collection statute keeps running, and for older debts that can mean the balance expires before it is ever paid. Currently not collectible
Monthly payment plans, from streamlined agreements up to 72 months for balances of 50,000 dollars or less, to full financial-statement agreements for larger debts, and partial payment agreements that end when the collection statute does. A plan that is in place stops levies and cuts the failure-to-pay penalty rate in half. Installment agreements
What changes when an attorney handles it
The IRS decides collection cases by formula: your income minus its expense standards, plus the equity in what you own. A good result comes from presenting those numbers correctly, using every allowance the rules permit, and choosing the option that fits the facts and the time left on the collection statute. That is attorney work, and it is what the tax resolution companies on television do not do before they take your fee.
Penalty abatement comes first in almost every case, because it reduces the balance every other option has to cover. If an active levy or garnishment is in place, releasing it is the first priority.
The attorneys who handle collections
Every collection matter is staffed by an attorney, not a case manager.
Andrew Gordon
MANAGING PARTNER
Jennifer Keegan
MANAGING ATTORNEY | TAX CONTROVERSY
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Tax debt resolution | Skokie, Illinois and nationwide
How we approach a tax debt
We start by pulling your IRS account and wage transcripts, so the case is built on what the IRS actually has: the balances by year, the penalties assessed, the collection statute dates, and any unfiled years. Unfiled returns are prepared first, because the IRS will not approve any arrangement without them. Then we run the IRS’s own collection formula and tell you which options are realistic before anything is filed.
We handle IRS and Illinois Department of Revenue debts from audits, back taxes, payroll, and sales tax, and we represent you through Appeals and the Tax Court if the collection action is wrong.
Questions people ask before they call
Yes. With a power of attorney on file, the IRS communicates with your attorney, who can request holds, negotiate payment terms, submit offers, and appeal collection actions. The negotiation is with IRS rules and formulas as much as with people, which is why the preparation matters more than the conversation.
Not for every balance. A small debt you can pay over time may need only an online payment plan. An attorney earns the fee when the balance is large relative to your income, when unfiled years or penalties are involved, when a levy or lien is active, when a business owes payroll tax, or when the debt came from an audit you did not participate in.
Sometimes, in three ways: an accepted Offer in Compromise, expiration of the ten-year collection statute, or penalty abatement that removes part of the balance. There is no program that forgives tax debt on request, and advertisements for the Fresh Start Program describe a set of 2011 rule changes, not an amnesty.
Whatever its formula says you can pay: net equity in assets plus monthly disposable income times 12 or 24. For some taxpayers that is a fraction of the balance; for others it is the full amount. Anyone who quotes you a settlement percentage before seeing your finances is guessing.
A lien is released when the debt is paid or the collection statute expires. Before that, the filed notice can be withdrawn for balances under 25,000 dollars on a direct-debit installment agreement, subordinated to allow refinancing, or discharged from a specific property being sold. Each is a separate application with its own requirements.
It depends on the balance, the number of years, and the tool used: a streamlined agreement is a different engagement from an Offer in Compromise with an appeal. In the consultation the attorney reviews your transcripts, tells you which options are realistic, and quotes the engagement so you can decide with the numbers in front of you.
