Here’s a pair of questions for the Greek Choir. If the IRS is simply following the law, how is it possible that Notices of Lien, which contain the words “there is a lien”:
a) contain no information about where the lien can be found, its identifying number, or the court order that established the lien?
b) usually cannot be found in the list of liens and Federal Tax Liens maintained by each of the 50 states?
In fact, using the service’s method, one can easily place an identical “notice of lien” on any other property-owning individual in one’s favor as long as one has the individual’s name, address and social security number, since the counties do absolutely no fact-checking before they record their notices. If this is not illegal for the IRS, it is clearly not illegal for anyone else. This is why some counties are beginning to maintain a separate category of “notice of lien” which are not to be heeded by third parties as genuine liens must be.
The same thing holds true of Notices of Levy, however, one usually doesn’t know about the notice until the bank has already sent off the money, and at that point it’s too late. No doubt this is why the service harbors such distaste for foreign banks, as they refuse to provide such collection cooperation.