stranded in catalonia?

July 1, 2006 4:07 AM

IRS- bank account problem - am I being scammed, or... am I scamming myself?

This is sort of a weird question, and I´ve searched around for a while for some sort of answer to no avail, so I guess I´ll post it here.

I´m on vacation in Spain with my fiancee. Being as how we´re both poor, we´ve both been pretty much relying on my Bank of America ATM - check card for cash, and trying to budget wisely. But today, in an account that yesterday had several hundred dollars, I seem to have a negative balance. When I online-banked in and looked at the activity, there´s a charge in my account for the ridiculous amount of $581.97 that is marke as 'IRS TAX LEVY FDES NCA'. Now, at first this struck me as evidence of scamming, but I remember now that four years ago I didn´t do my taxes and, as a result, ended up owing the IRS about $2000. I´ve been paying that back where I can, being very diligent about filing every year, and they´ve been keeping my tax returns ever since toward the damage. When I remembered that, I worried that maybe they had siezed that chunk of cash toward the balance. I´m going to call my bank tonight when I can, but I don´t know how helpful they´ll be. What I´m wondering is: does the IRS do this sort of thing, siezing cash from people´s bank accounts? It sort of struck me as a bit invasive, not to mention incredibly bad timing. But maybe this is all my fault. If anybody has ever heard of this -- the IRS seizing money from bank accounts for small amounts of money owed -- or knows that they don´t do that, it´d be appreciated. Thanks.

posted by koeselitz to work & money (3 comments total)

In a word, yes, they do.

You should have received a few notices by mail, at the very least a "Notice of intent to levy" and a "final notice of intent" - I think there are actually about five stages of notice. If you fail to respond to the final notice they do this sort of thing.

20/20 Hindsight: You should have called them and set up an installment agreement, which would have prevented levying.

[pet peeve: they've been keeping your tax refunds, not your tax returns.]
posted by mmoncur at 4:40 AM on July 1, 2006

Yes, they can do this, no BoA can't NOT do it. Once levied funds are gone, they are gone.
posted by Medieval Maven at 5:32 AM on July 1, 2006

What's better is that the bank can probably charge you a fee for complying with the levy.
posted by grouse at 6:50 AM on July 1, 2006