In March, a client of mine mailed his response to an IRS collection notice by certified mail. Four days later, the green receipt came back signed by an IRS employee.
In May, the IRS levied his business checking account two days before payroll.
How does a taxpayer who answered on time, with proof, end up with an empty operating account?
Since early 2025, the IRS has lost a large share of the people who open mail, answer phones, and resolve disputes, and much of its institutional knowledge has left with them. The collection side didn’t slow down.
The Automated Collection System issues notices, liens, and levies based on what the account shows on a given day, and fewer cases than ever get a human review first.
My client’s response was signed for and then sat unopened in a processing center. As far as the system could tell, he never answered, so it levied him on schedule. This is the environment tax representatives work in now.
Here are five strategies that proper client representation now requires.
1. Send It in a Way You Can Prove the IRS Received It
Certified mail proves that the envelope reached the IRS, although no one knows what's in it. Where possible, though, use the IRS’s Document Upload Tool, which gives you a confirmation of receipt. Save the confirmation number, take a screenshot of the upload, and keep a copy of everything you sent.
When mail is the only option, use certified mail or one of the private delivery services designated in IRS Notice 2016-30 and keep the proof of mailing, because it may become the only evidence that your client responded on time.
2. Confirm It Actually Posted
A response doesn’t protect your client until it appears in the IRS’s records. The current practice is to wait about six weeks after mailing and then call the Practitioner Priority Service to confirm it was recorded. My advice is to call within a week to let the IRS know it was sent and received and ask them to put a hold on collections.
For my client, that call would have shown that nothing had posted, at least two weeks before the levy hit. Multiply that follow-up by every notice for every client, and you start to see how much the workload has increased with fewer employees.
3. Write for an IRS Employee Who May Be in Their First Year
Whoever opens a written response has to understand it on the first read, and that person may have very little training. Put the taxpayer’s name, identification number, tax form, and tax period on every page.
State the relief you’re asking for as if the reader is seven. Same with the explanation.
Don't make anything more complex than it has to be.
4. Don’t Accept the First “No” on the Phone
This is the one I see go wrong most often.
A client has a levy on his paycheck and hasn’t filed his last three returns. What’s left of his pay no longer covers his rent, utilities, and groceries. His CPA calls to get the levy released, and the representative tells her nothing can happen until the client is in compliance.
In other words, every missing return must be filed. She hangs up and starts preparing three years of returns while the IRS keeps taking his wages.
In many cases, what the representative said is true. If a client wants to get into a resolution with the IRS, they have to be fully compliant.
In this situation, however, the representative was wrong.
Under Internal Revenue Code section 6343(a)(1)(D), the IRS must release a levy that is creating an economic hardship, meaning the taxpayer can’t pay reasonable basic living expenses. The IRS’s own manual says the same thing at IRM 5.11.2.3.1.4.
The returns still have to be filed, but the release can’t wait on them.
A practitioner who knows this asks for a manager, cites the statute and maybe even case law, and has the client’s income and expenses ready to show the hardship.
With so much experience gone, “no” answers are increasing as undertrained employees respond based on limited knowledge rather than the IRS’s actual position, and only someone who knows the rule during the call can change it.
5. Know Where to Escalate, and When
The Taxpayer Advocate Service remains the most effective channel when a taxpayer faces economic harm or when IRS systems have failed.
For examination and collection disputes, the Independent Office of Appeals has more authority to settle a case than the agent or officer who handled it earlier, and Appeals officers carrying heavy backlogs are generally motivated to resolve cases that arrive well prepared.
What It Would Have Taken
Protecting my client with the certified mail receipt would have meant submitting his response in a way that proved the IRS had it, calling to confirm it posted, and writing it clearly enough that a new employee couldn’t misread it. It would have meant knowing the rules when a phone representative said no, and recognizing when to go to the Taxpayer Advocate.
That’s for one notice, from one client, at one point in the year.
TL;DR
⏩ The IRS has lost staff in the areas that open mail, answer phones, and resolve disputes, while automated penalties and levies keep running on schedule.
⏩ A client can respond on time, with proof, and still be levied because the response hasn’t been processed.
⏩ Send responses in a way that proves receipt, and call to confirm they posted.
⏩ A levy that is causing an economic hardship must be released, even if the client has unfiled returns.
⏩ Know when to go to the Taxpayer Advocate Service or Appeals.
BTW, I get the same three questions from CPAs and attorneys every time they have a client with tax debt. I finally wrote the answers down.
Want to understand your options before you call anyone?
Download my free book — Freedom From Tax Debt — a plain-language guide to how the IRS collections process actually works and what resolution really looks like.
➥ Contact Attorney Stephen A. Weisberg for a free Tax Debt Analysis.
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Email: s.weisberg@weisberg.tax
Phone/Text: (248) 971-0885
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