If you find you owe the government taxes, don’t panic. You’re not alone.
An estimated 17 percent of federal taxes go unpaid each year. People who owe tax money to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may have claimed too many exemptions on their employee withholding forms, failed to file a tax return, under-reported income or made any number of other errors. Or they simply have decided not to pay up.
If these debts to the IRS are not resolved in a timely manner, unpaid taxes can have serious consequences ranging from property seizure to jail time.