IRS Collected $104B in Enforced Action in FY2023 – Filings Are Up Next

What the IRS Has on You: How Tax Resolution Attorneys Access Federal Records Before Negotiating

Washington, United States – June 27, 2026 / Mid Atlantic Law & Tax /

As IRS enforcement funding expands through 2026, Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax warns that taxpayers who wait are losing the window to resolve debt on their own terms.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – June 24, 2026 – The IRS collected $104.1 billion through enforced collection actions in fiscal year 2023, according to the IRS Data Book FY2023 – and that number is climbing. With Inflation Reduction Act funding continuing to expand IRS staffing and enforcement capacity into 2026, tax professionals across the Mid-Atlantic region are reporting a measurable uptick in collection notices, lien filings, and wage garnishment orders reaching clients who assumed their tax problems were dormant. Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax, a Washington, D.C.-area tax resolution firm led by attorney James, is seeing that pattern firsthand – and says the taxpayers most at risk are the ones who don’t yet know they’re in the IRS’s queue.

Key Facts

• The IRS issued 3.8 million federal tax liens in FY2023, according to the IRS Data Book FY2023 – a public record that damages credit and can encumber property without prior court action.

• The IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service’s Annual Report to Congress (FY2023) identified unrepresented taxpayers as significantly more likely to receive less favorable outcomes in IRS collection and audit proceedings than those with professional representation.

• Taxpayers with unfiled returns face compounding exposure – the IRS can file a Substitute for Return (SFR) that typically produces a higher tax bill than a properly filed return would, with no standard deductions applied.

• Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax represents individuals and businesses across federal and state tax matters, with direct access to IRS collections and appeals channels that most taxpayers can’t reach on their own.

• The firm offers a consultation before engagement – so clients understand what they’re facing before any commitment is made.

• Tax resolution timelines are not fixed: penalty abatement requests, installment agreements, and Offers in Compromise each carry different processing windows, and the earlier a case is opened, the more resolution tools remain available.

The IRS doesn’t send a final warning before it acts. Collection enforcement – levies, garnishments, lien filings – often follows a sequence of notices that taxpayers either missed or didn’t fully understand. By the time a paycheck is garnished or a bank account frozen, the strategic window has already narrowed. What was once a negotiable balance has become an active enforcement case, and the options available in that moment are fewer and more expensive than what existed six months earlier.

James, the attorney at Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax, puts it plainly: the taxpayers who call after a levy hits almost always had notice well before the enforcement began. The problem isn’t that the IRS moves without warning – it’s that the warning system doesn’t look urgent until it’s too late to act quietly. A CP503 or CP504 notice reads like correspondence. It’s actually a countdown.

Consider a typical case: a self-employed contractor who missed two years of estimated tax payments, received IRS notices, and set them aside expecting to “deal with it later.” By the time they called a tax attorney, the IRS had filed a lien, the outstanding balance had grown with penalties and interest, and their bank had already received a levy notice. The resolution still happened – an installment agreement was negotiated and the lien was eventually released – but the timeline was longer and the leverage was smaller than it would have been twelve months earlier. That’s not an unusual story. It’s a pattern.

Resolution is possible at almost every stage. But the tools available – penalty abatement under IRS First Time Abatement policy, Offer in Compromise eligibility, Currently Not Collectible status, direct negotiation before enforcement escalates – don’t all stay on the table indefinitely. The IRS has a process, and that process moves forward regardless of whether you’re ready.

“The IRS collected over $104 billion through enforced action in a single fiscal year,” said James, attorney at Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax. “That’s not an abstract statistic – that’s the agency demonstrating it has both the authority and the operational capacity to pursue collection aggressively. Taxpayers who are waiting for a better time to address their balance are going to find that the IRS isn’t waiting with them.”

About Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax

Mid-Atlantic Law & Tax is a Washington, D.C.-area firm providing legal and tax resolution services to individuals and businesses facing IRS and state tax enforcement. The firm handles unfiled returns, audits, wage garnishments, tax liens, bank levies, and back tax negotiations – with direct access to IRS collections and appeals personnel. Clients receive legal representation with the protection of attorney-client privilege from the first contact forward. Learn more at https://midatlantictaxresolution.com/.