Tax Lien Removed as of July 1, 2017

[Anonymous]

The credit agencies will no longer be required to report "some" tax liens on credit reports. Tax liens will be removed from your credit report if they do not have the correct identifiers (name, address, SS# OR date of birth). Does anyone know.... if I dispute my tax lien with one of the credit reporting agencies, do I run the risk of have the tax lien refiled? I have less than a year for the refiling date to expire. I would hate to wake a sleeping giant. 

[RobertEG]

There is always the possibility that the public record posting of a lien could be modified to provide the full information, and thus overcome the removal criteria being used under the National Consumer Assistance Plan for removal of some tax liens.

They have also now agreed to update their public records searches at least once every 90 days, and that can work both ways.

Any tax lien that previously lacked full information might later provide that info, and thus be included in your credit report.

[Anonymous]

I think it is highly unlikely that governmental agencies will go through the effort to modify these liens to include a full SSI number. Since they are public records, it would be a huge breech in consumer privacy laws to make this change. Also, deleting the lien from your credit report does not delete the lien itself. It still exists in the public records for anyone wanting to look for it and obviously if you apply for credit and do not disclose the existence of the lien if asked, then you can be accused of filing a fraudulent application for credit and whatever ramifications that may bring.

You can delete the lien from your credit files and the IRS won't come knocking. The CRA only check with the office reporting the lien and not the IRS. The only way you can change them in the public records would be to approach the IRS itself which of course presents all kinds of opportunities for them to "revisit" your current financial situation and maybe enforce a more aggressive collection action. Also, I think that the 90 day reporting is for the agency that files the item and not the CRA itself....so I would think a lot of public records offices would not be in on that program due to how much it would take out of their budget to facilitate that change. Pretty sure they have to routinely report updates to the CRA for them to keep it on file and not the other way around so in essence, the NCAP is forcing them to behave more like a creditor that updates monthly. I just don't see this happening with a lot of government agencies.