I'm hoping someone has some ideas on this. Sorry it's kind of long...
I was living in Pennsylvania in 1996. The first 10 months or so of the year, my job was in PA. In November, I swiched jobs and was working across the border in Ohio, but still living in PA. I had income tax withheld from my PA job in PA, and my OH job in OH. Stupidly, I never filed a state income tax return in either state, given that I was in my 20's, wasn't making that much to begin with, was in the process of moving to Texas where I currently live, and correctly figured that with the withholding, each state got at least as much as what they would have been entitled to anyway. Legally, since I was a PA resident, I was required to file and pay in PA on the income earned in both states, and get my Ohio withholding refunded.
Fast forward 5 years... I get a letter from not Pennsylvania, but OHIO claiming I owed them taxes. They were trying to call me an Ohio resident, which I never was, and collect taxes on my PA income, which was already taxed by PA. My attitude was "I was never a resident of your state, I don't owe you anything". I sent them copies of my W-2 showing Pennsylvania addresses, etc, but the only thing they would accept was a 1996 PA Income tax return, which I couldn't provide since I never filed in PA either.
Fast forward another 6 years, and I order copies of my credit reports. A Tax Lien from Ohio is on two of them, and I'm showing FICO scores of 708-710, despite having a perfect payment history and extremely low balances on all my credit accounts.
The tax lien is only $1600... chump change that I could pay today (while holding my nose, since I never legitimately owed them anything to begin with)... but that won't help, will it? I will just show as "paid", and still screw up my FICO score for 7 years, won't it?
I'm considering 2 possible strategies:
Contacting the Ohio Tax department and offering to pay in full for a deletion. However, I don't think this will work, because I don't think public records work like that, do they?
Or, doing it the hard way... filing with Pennsylvania a 1996 state income tax return (if I still even can), paying THEM the late fees, penalties, and taxes on my Ohio income from that year, then hiring an Ohio lawyer, and taking Ohio to court on the legitimacy of their lein, since I can now prove I was a Pennsylvania taxpayer that year. This way would cost considerably more, but it may be the only way to get the lien "deleted", and gives me the added satisfaction of being able to tell Ohio to go f themselves.
Any thoughts or advice from anyone knowlegable on these matters would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
