IRS to help homeowners

The IRS announced it will try to make it easier for homeowners in financial straights to refinance or sell their homes. The plan would speed up the process where financially distressed homeowners may request the a federal tax lien be made secondary to liens by the lending institution that is refinancing or restructuring a loan.
They said the program will focus on those people who ordinarily pay their taxes in full "but because of these extraordinary times are getting behind in their tax payments"

Criminal investigation

In support of the overall IRS Mission, Criminal Investigation serves the American public by investigating potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes in a manner that fosters confidence in the tax system and compliance with the law. While other federal agencies also have investigative jurisdiction for money laundering and some bank secrecy act violations, IRS is the only federal agency that can investigate potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code

Irs Collections

With the ecomomy slowing down, massive job layoffs you can expect the Internal Revenue Service to accelerate collections. Never before have they been so aggressive. They will get to your bank accounts and paychecks. You need to resolve your tax issues before they do.

ID Theft Up 644%

Did you know that we US taxpayers have a national advocate? Well, we do. And recently National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson reported to Congress that her office dealt with 644% more cases of identity theft in 2007 than in 2004. Olson’s office fields these calls because these cases are related to stolen social security numbers.

And it seems that the IRS’s “remedies” tend to make things worse. They have resulted in freezing or delaying legit accounts and even collections, liens and levies being applied where they shouldn’t.

Basically it’s a mess.

Olson concludes that the IRS should do a better job educating taxpayers about ID theft. And that’s the right thing to tell Congress.

But taxpayers need to learn to protect themselves and not rely on the IRS. I’ve written about this before so check out Internet Scammers Imitate IRS.