@Anonymous wrote:Hey so I have a slightly complicated situation which I need some advice on.
I have a Tax Lien with the NJ tax authorities for a period when I did not reside in the USA. I was actually in Afghanistan at that point and H&R block filed state taxes for me. I have stated that I was not in the US to the NJ tax office numerous times, and sadly late last year it went to collection agency who put in a Tax lien on my account.
Honestly at this stage I just want to pay it off and get the tax lien removed. I can call the NJ tax authorities who directly me to the agency which does not respond to my calls for some reason. So I am stuck.
What should I do to move this forward? Welcome to My Fico
You are going to have to deal with the agency that put the lien on your reports, whether or not you were in the US is irrelavant you are responsible for assuring all your taxes are paid on time you cannot pass the buck to a hired agency though you may be able to sue them for failing to carry out what you paid them to do. Thank you for your service!
And secondly does anybody have any experience removing a tax lien from the credit offices after its been paid? In order for it to be removed from your CRs you would have to settle the lien and then ask them to withdraw the lien since its been paid, this is the action that gets it removed from your CRs, some states have rules that allow this others dont.
@Anonymous wrote:Awesome thanks. Should I get anything in writing for agency or should I do everything in writing?
Ie write to the agency to remove the lien after I make the payment? Or can I do so over the phone while talking to the person?
All communications with governmental agencies should be in writing, verbal agreements dont really hold water with them. The best thing to do is to offer to pay the lien in full and ask them to withdraw it once your payment has been received. You can use the phone to gather info you may need in order to write to them a settlement offer.
@Anonymous wrote:Sounds good. Thanks for your help.
And once the Tax Lien is removed I can dispute the claim with Transunion et al. and that should ideally get it removed from my credit report?
If the tax lien is actually removed from the record, the credit companies can't really keep it on the credit report correct?
There would be no reason to dispute once the withdrawal is entered the runners who collect the info for companies like Lexis Nexis will have a copy of it and that info will get sold to the CRAs resulting in deletion. If for some reason they dont delete within a reasonable period of time then thats the time to engage them with a formal dispute.
If the state issues a lien withdrawal the CRAs cannot keep it on your CRs, the withdrawal is as if it never happened.