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Owning a small business requires financial diligence—especially staying on top of taxes. Tracking receipts and keeping orderly records not only makes tax filing easier, it paves the way to a healthier business.

If your spouse is in debt to the IRS and his or her wages are garnished because of it, chances are you are liable for the debt as well.

If there’s one truth about IRS tax debt, it’s that it can happen to anyone, regardless of one’s income. A simple mistake can start the ball rolling and before you know it, a small IRS debt has snowballed into a big one because of added penalties and interest. 

I’m interested in helping you keep your money. Every step of the way, my tax resolution guidance is geared towards my client paying the absolute minimum amount of legal tax. There are many ways I do this.

Problems–life problems–can happen to anyone. When I met Richard, he was in serious trouble with the IRS. He had made a mistake many years earlier. At that time, he began a relationship with a woman he loved. But sometime during their relationship, she got sick. She required hospitalization. Richard had a good job and he helped pay her medical bills. But the bills soon spiraled out of control.

A wage garnishment or an IRS garnishment of your bank account can be very stressful. I’ve had innumerable clients come to me in a panic, at the end of their ropes. The inexplicable IRS paperwork, frustrating waits on the phone to speak to a representative, and the panic and worry of understanding the process had them turned upside down.

A man who ran his own business came to me in a panic after the IRS notified him of an audit. The IRS said he owed many thousands of dollars. Not only that, my client told me frankly that his records were a mess. I told him to gather everything he could: bank statements, credit card statements, and receipts. Eager to cooperate, he was nevertheless soon overwhelmed by the amount of paper he had to track down.

I had a client recently who had not filed a tax return in eighteen years. He also did not have a checking account for 20 years. He cashed his earnings as an independent contractor and stowed the money in his house. His was a life lived “underground.”

The #1 fear of people with tax problems–whether it’s an unpaid tax debt or years of unfiled tax returns–is that the IRS will seize their house. In fact, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights discourages seizure of a primary residence. Those rights stipulate, however, that if a taxpayer does not attempt to pay–either by voluntarily paying down the debt or seeking to negotiate a payment plan with the IRS–then the agency may seize assets, including the debtor’s house.