Stop losing sleep over your tax situation. I'm Darrin Mish \u2014 a tax attorney in Tampa who's spent 32 years handling exactly this kind of problem. Here's what you need to know.<\/p>\n
You went to use your debit card, or you logged into your bank account, and the money was gone. Frozen.<\/p>\n
There’s a good chance the IRS is the reason. If that’s where you are right now, you need to know two things: you are not out of options, and you are on a clock.<\/p>\n
When the IRS levies your bank account, the bank doesn’t hand your money over the same day. By law, it has to hold those funds for 21 days before sending anything to the IRS.<\/p>\n
That hold is not a formality. It’s a window, and it’s the single most important stretch of time in this whole situation.<\/p>\n
Plenty of people waste it because they don’t even know it’s there.<\/p>\n
They assume the money is already gone. Then they spend the next three weeks trying to figure out how to cover the rent instead of trying to get the money back.<\/p>\n
The money isn’t gone yet. But it will be if nobody acts.<\/p>\n
A bank levy doesn’t come out of nowhere. The IRS sends notices first, usually several of them.<\/p>\n
The problem is that those notices look like every other piece of IRS mail. People set them aside, and the final notice of intent to levy gets buried in the pile with the rest.<\/p>\n
Once that final notice goes unanswered and the appeal window closes, the IRS can reach right into your account. It doesn’t need a judge, and it doesn’t need your permission.<\/p>\n
It just sends the bank a form. That’s how simple it is on their end.<\/p>\n
I’m not telling you this to scold anybody for not opening the mail. I’m telling you because it explains why the levy feels like it came out of the blue when, from the IRS’s side, it was the last step in a long line of letters.<\/p>\n
A bank levy is usually a one-time grab. It takes what’s sitting in the account on the day it hits.<\/p>\n
That’s different from a wage garnishment. A bank levy doesn’t keep draining your future deposits the way a garnishment drains every paycheck.<\/p>\n
But don’t relax. The IRS can turn around and issue another levy next week.<\/p>\n
So clearing this levy is step one, not the finish line. If the debt underneath it is still there, so is the risk of the next one.<\/p>\n
Here’s what actually matters during those 21 days. The levy can be released, but somebody has to give the IRS a reason to release it.<\/p>\n
Generally, a release happens in one of these situations:<\/p>\n
1. The levy is creating a real hardship.<\/strong> You can’t pay rent or buy food because the money was taken. 2. The levy was issued in error.<\/strong> The IRS got something wrong, and the levy never should have gone out. 3. You get into an agreement that resolves the debt underneath it.<\/strong> Once there’s a deal in place on the balance, the reason for the levy goes away. 4. The money that got hit was exempt.<\/strong> The IRS shouldn’t have touched it in the first place.<\/p>\n None of that works if you’re not compliant. If you have unfiled returns, the IRS won’t release a thing until those are in.<\/p>\n In my office, that’s usually the first fire we put out. Get the returns filed, and the doors start opening.<\/p>\n First, don’t start draining or shuffling money around to outrun the next levy. The IRS sees it.<\/p>\n Moving money around can make you look like you’re hiding assets. That’s a worse problem than the one you started with.<\/p>\n Second, don’t ignore deposits that should never have been taken. Certain money carries protection.<\/p>\n A portion of things like Social Security and certain benefits can be off limits. If that’s what got swept up in the levy, it’s a fast argument for getting it back.<\/p>\n After 32 years of doing this, I’ll tell you that a bank levy looks like the end of the world. It almost never is.<\/p>\n It’s a pressure tactic. It’s the IRS trying to get your attention because the letters didn’t.<\/p>\n And once it has your attention, the conversation can finally start. That’s not a bad thing, as long as you use the time you have.<\/p>\n The people who lose that money for good are the ones who freeze up and let the 21 days run out. The people who keep it are the ones who move.<\/p>\n So understand that the clock started the day the bank received the levy. Don’t burn it sitting on hold getting nowhere.<\/p>\n If we can act inside that window, there’s a real chance of getting the levy released and your money back where it belongs. That’s the immediate goal.<\/p>\n But the bigger question comes next. How do we resolve the debt underneath it so this doesn’t happen again?<\/p>\n That’s where the actual strategy starts. Releasing one levy buys time; resolving the balance is what gets the IRS out of your bank account for good.<\/p>\n Think of it in two stages: stage one is the frozen account, and stage two is the balance that caused it.<\/p>\n If your account is frozen right now, every day counts. The 21-day hold doesn’t pause while you think about it.<\/p>\n Call my office at (813) 229-7100 or visit getirshelp.com for a confidential consultation. We’ll look at why the levy hit, what grounds exist for a release, and what it will take to keep it from happening again.<\/p>\n This article is general information, not legal advice for your situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the IRS levies your bank account, the bank must hold the funds for 21 days. Here is how to use that window to get the levy released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_linkwrite_keywords":"","_linkwrite_no_autolink":false,"_linkwrite_no_inbound":false,"_linkwrite_exclude":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[665,666,664,392,147,148],"class_list":["post-29180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irs-levy","tag-21-day-hold","tag-exempt-funds","tag-frozen-bank-account","tag-irs-bank-levy","tag-irs-collections","tag-levy-release"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29473,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29180\/revisions\/29473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getirshelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Two Mistakes That Make It Worse<\/h2>\n
The Levy Is a Pressure Tactic<\/h2>\n
Get the Levy Released, Then Fix What Caused It<\/h2>\n