How Does Wage Garnishment Work, Exactly?
...and can a wage garnishment be stopped?
Here is the way that wage garnishments work as far as the IRS is concerned:
First, they have to give you the appropriate notices and your right to a hearing, unless you don't respond to them by the deadline.
If you don't respond by the deadline, then the IRS will send a notice of levy of your wages to your employer.
So we're talking to an employee who receives a W-2 and not to somebody who's self employed (that gets a 1099).
So, assuming you're a W-2 employee, the IRS would send notice to your employer. This notice says that they are under an obligation to not pay the employee the check.
They will also provide instructions to the employer. There's a chart that tells the employer how much you can give the employee. But roughly you're talking about (for a single employee) $400 or a little bit more per month. So it's very drastic.
This is designed to get the taxpayer (the employee) to contact the IRS right away and make arrangements to pay.
Now, if the employer obeys this levy from the IRS (and they better do it because otherwise they'll be liable for the money) they will withhold the wages from the employee except what's allowed by law.
And the employee calls a somebody like me and says, "What can I do? The IRS took my paycheck!"
What the taxpayer can do (and what I'd do for them) is contact the IRS and prove hardship and fill out a collection information statement that demonstrates why the taxpayer needs all of his paycheck or most of it.
So it's designed to get the taxpayer (the employee) to contact the IRS right away and make arrangements to pay.
That can usually be negotiated pretty quickly with the IRS, but is only a temporary solution.
The taxpayer still has to make a long term resolution of their taxes.
But in a nutshell, that's the way it works in and how a taxpayer can try to get more of his paycheck from the IRS.
...and that can usually be negotiated pretty quickly from the with the IRS now that that's only a temporary solution. The taxpayer still has to make a long term resolution of his taxes.
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