Bankrupt Taxes....I Thought You Couldn't Do That??

Hi. Today, we’re going to talk about the discharging of taxes and bankruptcy again. And that’s because my good friend, Attorney Jonathan Ginsberg of Atlanta, Georgia, posted a comment on my blog for my June 12th blog post on the discharging of taxes and bankruptcy, and he made a couple of very interesting points.

The first thing that he said was that liens can often survive a bankruptcy and a chapter 7. He also indicated that taxes can be discharged in a chapter 13, as well. So I’m going to address both of those points.

Before I do that, I want to direct you to Jonathan’s excellent website at thebklawyer.com. It’s a really great blog. It has to do with filing of bankruptcies in general and filing of bankruptcies in Georgia, in particular. I want to encourage you to go check that out. www.thebklawyer.com.

First of all, he said that liens can survive a chapter 7 sometimes in a chapter 7 bankruptcy, and he’s right. If you own real property, which is real estate, and a lien is filed while you own that real estate, then the lien attaches to the real estate. In a bankruptcy, if you have equity in that real estate, the lien is going to survive that bankruptcy most likely.

Interestingly, if you don’t have equity in that property at the time of the discharge of the bankruptcy, then we can often get the IRS to release that lien because post petition property is not supposed to be subject to lien. The liens are supposed to be discharged in that scenario. Here’s what that means.

If you did not have equity at the time of the bankruptcy, then the IRS is not entitled to your after acquired equity. Hopefully that makes sense to you all.

#2. He also indicated that taxes can often be discharged in a chapter 13, and that’s also true.

In a chapter 13, the IRS – or actually the bankruptcy court – uses the IRS’s financial standards to determine the debtors ability to pay. We really don’t want to be there because the IRS financial standards are really unreasonable but, in fact, taxes can be discharged in a chapter 13. We’re finding that more and more tax bankruptcies can be filed and not subject to a chapter 13, which is where you want to be.

If you're very interested in that, then give us a call at 888-438-6474, and maybe we can do a bankruptcy analysis on your case.

Otherwise, take care and bye for now!