Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Just in time for the April 15 IRS filing deadline comes news from the Washington Post that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers expecting refunds are instead getting letters informing them of tax debts they never knew about: often a debt incurred by their parents. The government is confiscating their checks, sometimes over debts 20—30 years old. For example, when Mary Grice was 4 (in 1960), her father died … ‘Until the kids turned 18, her mother received survivor benefits from Social Security … Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family in 1977. … Four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. … “It was a shock, ” says Grice, 58. “What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can’t prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus.”‘ The Treasury Department has intercepted … $75 million from debts delinquent for more than 10 years according to the department’s debt management service. ‘The aggressive effort to collect old debts started three years ago — the result of a single sentence tucked into the farm bill lifting the 10-year statute of limitations on old debts to Uncle Sam.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative’s Debt