What the IRS Can and Can’t Take: Your Complete Guide to Garnishment Exemptions

I’m Darrin Mish. Tampa tax attorney, 32 years in, more than $100 million in IRS debt resolved. What follows isn’t theory – it’s what I’ve actually watched work.

The Short Answer

• The IRS can levy most property you own, but IRC Section 6334(a) exempts 13 specific categories including your principal residence, tools of trade up to a dollar limit, and certain benefits.
• Social Security is fully protected from private creditors but the IRS can still take 15% through the Federal Payment Levy Program.
• Retirement accounts are NOT exempt by statute, but the “present right to property” doctrine protects unvested and plan-locked balances. IRM 5.11.6 policy restricts levies on accessible retirement funds.
• The CCPA 25% wage garnishment cap that applies to private creditors does NOT apply to the IRS. The IRS uses its own Publication 1494 calculation and typically takes far more.
• If it’s not on the Section 6334 list and no protective doctrine applies, the IRS can generally reach it: bank accounts, investment accounts, business equipment, vehicles, commissions.

Why This Matters

Most people who owe the IRS assume the worst. They picture agents hauling off their car, emptying their bank account, seizing the house. After 32 years, I can tell you the reality is both narrower and stranger than most taxpayers expect.

Federal law draws specific lines around what the IRS can and cannot take. Some of those lines are written into statute. Others come from common-law property doctrines or internal IRS policy. Understanding all three is how you protect yourself.

The Two Legal Frameworks You Need to Know

When people think about wage garnishment, they usually think of one set of rules. Actually there are two, and they work very differently.

Private creditors (credit card companies, medical providers, car lenders) operate under the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) at 15 USC 1673. The CCPA caps how much any private creditor can garnish from your wages: the lesser of 25% of disposable earnings or the amount above 30 times the federal minimum wage. They also have to sue you first and win a judgment before garnishing anything.

The IRS operates under a completely different framework. Internal Revenue Code Section 6331 gives the IRS authority to levy directly. No lawsuit, no judgment, no court order required. And the CCPA’s 25% cap does not apply to the IRS at all. Instead, the IRS uses its own calculation tables in Publication 1494 to determine how much of your paycheck they’ll leave you.

This distinction matters. Most of the “know your rights” articles you’ll find online are actually describing CCPA limits that have nothing to do with the IRS. If you’re dealing with federal tax debt, ignore the 25% number. That’s not your rule.

IRC Section 6334: What the IRS Cannot Touch

Here’s the statute that actually matters: Internal Revenue Code Section 6334. This is the federal law that enumerates property exempt from IRS levy. The list is specific, and if it’s not on the list, it’s generally fair game.

The full Section 6334(a) exemptions include:

1. Wearing apparel and school books. Clothes and kids’ textbooks.
2. Fuel, provisions, furniture, and personal effects. Up to a dollar limit adjusted annually for inflation ($11,980 in 2026 per Rev. Proc. 2025-32).
3. Books and tools of a trade, business, or profession. Up to $5,990 in 2026.
4. Unemployment benefits. State unemployment compensation.
5. Undelivered mail.
6. Certain annuity and pension payments. Specifically Railroad Retirement benefits and Armed Forces disability payments.
7. Workers’ compensation. Both state and federal.
8. Judgments for support of minor children. Money you’re receiving as child support.
9. Minimum exemption for wages. The Publication 1494 calculation based on filing status.
10. Certain service-connected disability payments. Veterans Affairs disability.
11. Certain public assistance payments. TANF, SSI.
12. Job Training Partnership Act assistance.
13. Principal residence. Your home, except with written district director approval and court approval.

Notice what’s not on that list. Retirement accounts. Regular bank accounts. Investment accounts. Cars. Business property. Commissions. Accounts receivable. All potentially reachable by statute.

But statutory exemptions aren’t the whole story. There’s another doctrine that does serious protective work for retirement accounts in particular.

The “Present Right to Property” Doctrine

Section 6331 authorizes the IRS to levy “property and rights to property” belonging to the taxpayer. That phrasing is doing a lot of work. The IRS steps into your shoes and takes what you can take. Nothing more.

For retirement accounts, this creates two powerful limits:

• Unvested employer contributions are not yet your property. The IRS can’t levy them.
• Funds you have no current right to withdraw (because your plan restricts distributions to specific triggering events like separation from service or age 59½) are generally unreachable too.

This doctrine is why a 45-year-old still employed by their company with a 401(k) restricted to in-service hardship withdrawals often cannot have that account levied, despite owing significant back taxes. The funds are not yet distributable to the employee, so they are not distributable to the IRS either.

Social Security: Protected, But Not From the IRS

Social Security benefits get their protection from a different statute entirely: Section 207 of the Social Security Act, 42 USC 407. That section says SS benefits are exempt from “execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process.”

That sounds airtight. It’s not.

Congress carved out a specific exception in IRC Section 6331(h) called the Federal Payment Levy Program. FPLP allows the IRS to continuously levy up to 15% of your Social Security benefits to pay federal tax debt. Fifteen percent doesn’t sound like much until you’re a retiree on a fixed $1,800 monthly check and suddenly $270 of it is gone.

SSI, Supplemental Security Income, is different. SSI is completely protected, even from the IRS. That’s because SSI is specifically means-tested public assistance for people with very limited income and resources.

I’ve covered the Social Security mechanics in more detail, including the bank account separation strategy that actually matters, in my guide to protecting Social Security from garnishment.

Retirement Accounts: The Biggest Misconception

ERISA does not protect your 401(k) from the IRS.

I say this carefully because I hear the opposite almost weekly. Clients assume that because their retirement account is “ERISA-qualified,” it’s untouchable by anyone, including the federal government. That’s wrong.

ERISA’s anti-alienation provision stops most creditors. It does not stop the IRS. The IRS’s Section 6331 levy authority supersedes ERISA.

What actually protects most taxpayers’ retirement accounts is a combination of two things:

First, vesting and plan access restrictions (the present-right-to-property doctrine covered above). The IRS can only reach funds the taxpayer has a current right to receive. Unvested employer contributions are off-limits entirely. And if your plan only allows distributions upon triggering events and none apply, the IRS generally cannot reach those funds either.

Second, internal IRS policy at IRM 5.11.6, which requires revenue officers to find “flagrant and willful” conduct before levying retirement accounts. That’s a high bar that ordinary back-tax situations do not meet.

IRAs are a different story. They’re always fully vested and always accessible, which makes them significantly more exposed than active 401(k)s.

I walk through the full retirement-account analysis, including vesting mechanics and the tax silver lining when the IRS does hit a retirement account, in can the IRS take your 401(k) or IRA.

Your Wages: The Publication 1494 Calculation

When the IRS levies wages, they don’t take a flat percentage. They use a filing-status and dependent-count calculation from Publication 1494 that determines your “exempt amount” (the minimum they’ll leave you) and take everything else.

For 2026, the actual exempt amounts from IRS Publication 1494 for a weekly pay period are:

Add $101.92 per additional dependent for single, MFJ, HoH, and MFS filers. Taxpayers who are over 65 or blind get an additional exempt amount (weekly: $39.42 single/HoH, $31.73 any other filing status).

The result is harsh. If you’re single with no dependents earning $1,000 per week net, the IRS leaves you with $309.62 and takes the remaining $690.38. Try paying rent and groceries on $309 a week.

This is why stopping an active wage garnishment is so urgent. The math doesn’t leave room to absorb. See IRS wage garnishments and how to stop them for the playbook.

Your Home: Protected But Not Invincible

IRC Section 6334(a)(13) protects your principal residence from IRS levy, but with caveats. The IRS can still seize and sell your home, but only with written approval from a district director and a federal court order.

In practice, this is extremely rare. Home seizures represent a tiny fraction of IRS collection actions. The IRS has easier, faster, less politically risky ways to collect: bank levies, wage garnishment, liens that attach to the home if and when you sell. The nightmare scenario of federal agents showing up to physically remove you from your house almost never happens.

Almost. Which is different from never.

Tools of Your Trade and Personal Property

If you’re a plumber, the IRS cannot legally take your truck and tools below the Section 6334(a)(3) threshold. Same for a carpenter’s saws, a mechanic’s wrenches, a musician’s instruments, or a cook’s commercial kitchen equipment up to the dollar limit. The point of this exemption is to preserve your ability to earn income, and therefore your ability to pay the tax debt.

The dollar limits matter. For 2026, $5,990 in tools of trade are exempt. If your professional equipment is worth more than that, the excess is exposed.

Household furniture and personal effects are similarly protected up to $11,980. Beyond that, technically reachable, but rarely pursued.

What Is Never Protected

This is the short list, and it’s the one you need to know cold:

• Bank accounts holding general funds (not direct-deposit SS or exempt benefits)
• Brokerage and investment accounts
• Accounts receivable if you’re self-employed
• Business equipment above the tools-of-trade threshold
• Vehicles above basic transportation need
• Commissions
• Real estate other than your principal residence
• Life insurance cash value

If the IRS has a properly issued levy and targets any of this, there’s no statutory exemption to fall back on. Your only real protection becomes timing (the 30-day Collection Due Process window after a Final Notice of Intent to Levy) and negotiation.

What To Actually Do

Knowing what’s exempt is useful. Knowing how to use that knowledge is what matters.

Keep Social Security in its own dedicated bank account. Banks are required to automatically protect the last two months of direct-deposited SS benefits, but only if the account is clean. Mix in a paycheck and the whole account can freeze while the bank sorts it out.

Don’t drain a retirement account to pay the IRS. You’ll eat the 10% early withdrawal penalty that you wouldn’t owe if the IRS levied the account directly under IRC Section 72(t)(2)(A)(vii).

Respond to a Final Notice of Intent to Levy within 30 days. Request a Collection Due Process hearing. This single action stops collection while your case is reviewed and opens the door to every collection alternative available.

Get professional representation. Attorneys, CPAs, and enrolled agents are the three categories of practitioner authorized to represent you before the IRS. For an active or imminent levy, you want someone who handles IRS collection work specifically. I’ve covered the representation question in detail at who can represent you before the IRS.

The Bottom Line

The IRS has less power than most taxpayers fear, but more than the internet wants you to believe. The exemptions at IRC Section 6334 are real and specific. Social Security, retirement accounts, and your home all have layered protections, some statutory, some common-law, some policy-based.

Knowing the lines is the first move. Knowing how to stay on the right side of them is the whole game.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can the IRS legally take for unpaid taxes?

The IRS can levy bank accounts, wages, investment accounts, business equipment, vehicles, commissions, accounts receivable, and real estate other than your principal residence. Anything not specifically exempted under IRC Section 6334 is generally reachable, though separate doctrines protect certain retirement funds.

Can the IRS take my Social Security check?

Yes, but only up to 15% of the monthly benefit through the Federal Payment Levy Program under IRC Section 6331(h). Private creditors cannot garnish Social Security at all, but the IRS carved out a specific exception for federal tax debt. SSI (Supplemental Security Income) is fully protected even from the IRS.

Can the IRS take my house?

Technically yes, but rarely in practice. IRC Section 6334(a)(13) protects your principal residence from levy unless the IRS obtains both written district director approval AND a federal court order. Home seizures are a small fraction of IRS collection actions.

What percentage of my paycheck can the IRS garnish?

There’s no fixed percentage for IRS wage levies. The IRS uses Publication 1494 tables that leave you with a filing-status-based minimum ($309.62 per week for a single filer with no dependents in 2026) and takes everything above that. This is completely different from the 25% CCPA cap that applies to private creditors – that limit doesn’t apply to the IRS.

Is my retirement account safe from the IRS?

Not automatically. ERISA doesn’t protect 401(k)s from IRS levy, and Section 6334 doesn’t exempt retirement funds. But real protection exists: unvested employer contributions can’t be levied (you have no property right in them yet), funds locked behind plan triggering events generally can’t be reached, and IRS internal policy at IRM 5.11.6 requires “flagrant and willful” conduct before revenue officers go after retirement accounts. IRAs are more exposed than 401(k)s because they’re always vested and always accessible.

Can the IRS empty my bank account?

Yes. Bank account levies are one of the IRS’s most common collection tools. The bank freezes the account for 21 days after receiving the levy, then sends the balance (up to the debt amount) to the IRS. General bank accounts have no statutory protection. Direct-deposited Social Security, VA disability, and certain other federal benefits are protected under bank automatic-review rules for the last two months of deposits.

What should I do if I get a Final Notice of Intent to Levy?

Request a Collection Due Process hearing within 30 days. This single action stops collection while your case is reviewed and opens access to every collection alternative: installment agreements, Offer in Compromise, Currently Not Collectible status. Missing the 30-day window closes most of your best options.

Does the 25% wage garnishment limit apply to the IRS?

No. The 25% limit in the Consumer Credit Protection Act applies only to private creditors (credit cards, medical bills, car loans). The IRS operates under IRC Section 6331 and uses Publication 1494 instead, which typically leaves the taxpayer with far less than 75% of their paycheck.

Get Help Now

If you are worried about what the IRS can take or you’ve already received a Final Notice of Intent to Levy, you do not have to handle it alone. Contact the Law Offices of Darrin T. Mish, P.A. at (813) 229-7100 for a free consultation.

For more on how garnishment works mechanically, see my complete guide to wage garnishments and tax garnishments guide for 2026.