The Internal Revenue Service is not the best lender of last resort. By not paying taxes, you are ultimately borrowing from the Government, at extremely inflated rates. By compounding the interest and penalties it will make a bad situation much worse.
For businesses, the most common tax delinquencies come from not paying the 941 payroll tax. Failure to pay payroll taxes can easily put the entire business in jeopardy and have a drastic affect on the business owner’s assets. If the company is dissolved, the IRS will still require the owner to pay the outstanding balances of payroll taxes. Even a personal bankruptcy will not eliminate the burden.
The best advice for tax problems is to be pro-active at all times. Like most bad situations, ignoring it will not make it go away. If the company can’t pay taxes on a timely basis, there is a strong indication the business is improperly capitalized. This can cascade into difficulties that may be hard to get out of, which could create lasting negative obligations.
As far as the IRS is concerned, first they will send a letter for a balance due. Upon not hearing anything from the taxpayer they might send a few more. When the bureaucracy figures out nobody is returning their message, they will assign a case worker. This means your account has moved down a notch. At this point either a payment plan is negotiated or a Notice of Federal Tax Lien is filed. Avoiding a tax lien is paramount. Once a payment plan is in place, it is imperative that payments are made on a timely basis. With proper cooperation a payment plan can be in place without having a formal tax lien.
A factoring company can actually assist in situations where there is a delinquency. But once a lien has been levied against a company it will require written subordination from the IRS in order for any commercial finance company to even consider funding. This is because the IRS can collect from your customers invoices that should go to the factor. When a payment schedule is in place, the factor may send advances from invoices directly to the IRS. This insures that payments are being made in a timely fashion per the IRS agreement.
Luckily tax problems can be fixed, but they shouldn’t be ignored.
