Federal tax liens, and the date that is not on them

Listen instead

The same material, read aloud and told more loosely than it is written. Nothing is said in it that this page does not also say.

That same recording, with the writing lit line by line as it plays and the sections listed beside it, is on its own page.

It attaches everything, and it starts at assessment

26 U.S.C. 6321¹ is one sentence long, and the breadth is in the last clause.

Where a person liable to pay any tax neglects or refuses to pay after demand, the amount, with interest, additions and costs, is a lien in favor of the United States upon all property and rights to property, whether real or personal, belonging to that person.

Not a parcel. Not a class of collateral. Everything, including what the person acquires afterwards.

26 U.S.C. 6322² sets the moment. Unless another date is fixed by law, the lien arises at the time the assessment is made, and continues until the liability is satisfied or becomes unenforceable by lapse of time. Assessment is an administrative act inside the Internal Revenue Service. No county register records it, and nothing on any recorded document states it.

Against a judgment creditor it counts from the filing

26 U.S.C. 6323(a)³ names four parties the lien cannot touch until it has been filed, and one of them is you.

The lien imposed by section 6321 is not valid as against any purchaser, holder of a security interest, mechanic's lienor, or judgment lien creditor until notice meeting the requirements of subsection (f) has been filed by the Secretary.

So the reading runs opposite to the state tax warrant, where the statute can reach back to a date the docket does not show. Here the earlier date governs the world at large and the filing date governs the people who search. A judgment lien creditor who docketed before the notice was filed is ahead of the United States on that property, whatever the assessment date turns out to have been.

Subsection (b) then carves out interests that beat the lien even after filing, including a purchaser of securities or of a motor vehicle who had no actual notice. Those are not readable from a register either, and they are not about land.

Where the notice goes, and what that means for a search

26 U.S.C. 6323(f) sends the notice to an office the state designates, and splits real property from personal property.

For real property, it is filed in one office within the state, county or other subdivision designated by that state's laws, where the property is situated. For personal property, tangible or intangible, it is again one office designated by state law where the property is situated. Where a state has designated no such office, the notice goes to the clerk of the United States district court for the district where the property is.

Two things follow for a searcher. The county office that holds deeds is where a federal lien against land turns up, so an ordinary parcel search finds it. And a federal lien against a person's personal property may sit in a different office entirely, which a parcel search will never reach.

The refiling window, and what a missed one does

26 U.S.C. 6323(g) gives the notice a life, and the consequence of letting it lapse is a change of date rather than a disappearance.

The required refiling period is the one-year period ending 30 days after the expiration of 10 years after the date of the assessment, and then a further one-year period ending with the expiration of each following 10 years. Refiling has to happen in the office where the prior notice was filed, and for real property the fact of refiling has to be entered in the index.

If the notice is not refiled in that window, it is treated as filed on whatever later date it is filed. It does not vanish. It loses its place in the queue and rejoins at the back, behind everything recorded in the meantime.

Separately, 26 U.S.C. 6502⁴ limits collection itself. Where the assessment was made in time, the tax may be collected by levy or by a proceeding in court only if that is begun within 10 years after the assessment, subject to extensions for installment agreements and certain releases of levy.

How to read one off a register

Four things, and the first is the one everybody skips.

Read the notice itself rather than the index line. The form states the assessment date and the last day for refiling, which are the two dates the rest of this page turns on and neither of which is the recording date.

Compare the filing date of the notice against the docketing date of the judgment, because 6323(a) makes that comparison the one that decides priority between them.

Check whether the last day for refiling has passed with nothing filed after it. A notice past its window has not been released, but it no longer holds its original date.

Then treat the absence of a federal notice in a parcel search as evidence about that parcel only. The lien under 6321 already attaches everything the person owns; what a county search tells you is whether it has been made good against people like you, there.

What this does not cover

Whether the lien is valid, what it is worth, and everything that happens after a notice is found.

Assessment, demand and the taxpayer's administrative history are Internal Revenue Service records rather than public ones, and none of the dates on the notice can be verified from a register. 26 U.S.C. 6325⁵ governs release and discharge of particular property, which is its own process with its own documents. The superpriorities in 6323(b), the rules for a purchase money security interest, and the treatment of after-acquired property each turn on facts no index holds. And a certificate of release is a separate recorded instrument, so a notice appearing without one has not necessarily survived.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer, and none of it is advice. Whether a federal tax lien stands ahead of a judgment, and what to do about one, are questions for counsel with the taxpayer's account transcript in front of them. What a page can do is narrower. It can tell you that the lien started on a day the document does not print, and that against you it counts from the day somebody walked it into a county office.