What Actions Will the IRS Take Against Me If I Owe a Liability? So the IRS uses the carrot and stick to get people into compliance and to get the liabilities resolved generally they use to stick more than the character so what happens is the more time that passes from when the IRS is aware that you owe a liability the more significant and strong the actions they take against you are again they want you in compliance they want you to pay your taxes they want you to get on a payment plan if you can't afford to pay your taxes in fall and they're not going to tolerate you owing money to. The government so what happens as time passes is the IRS we take an increasingly serious action against you so the starts with letters you start getting letters you start getting correspondence of increasing urgency and then what the IRS does is they generally go after low-hanging fruit they start seizing bank accounts they start using wages they can take a portion of your Social Security they're looking for assets that they can quickly find and quickly liquidate in order to satisfy the liability if they can't find those assets depending on how much liability you owe then they may take stronger action against you they may send a field agent after you to come to your house they may summons you and bring you in for an interview they may demand the production of financial information or other documents and they look to get their money back so what happens is the longer that IRS liabilities go unresolved more serious. The government is and the harder and faster they move so it's really important from a planning perspective as soon as you become aware of an IRS liability where as soon as you're in a position to take care of a tax problem that you do so as quickly as possible taking swift and prompt action will mitigate most IRS problems and will do so very quickly.