Category: Federal Tax Lien Info

During the federal government shutdown in October, the IRS stopped filing new federal tax liens. That put a major damper on marketing efforts for those of us that rely heavily on tax liens for our marketing.

We’re starting to see lien volume picking up again finally. There was a full two weeks of nothing, then two more weeks of just a trickle. Literally over the course of the past few days, we’re finally starting to see a significant uptick in lien records we’re picking up. We’re still a long ways from the 400+ liens per day above our $5,000 threshold that we’re used to seeing across the country, but it’s back above 200 per day and growing.

This hickup in the flow of lien filing was a good time to remind ourselves about two important marketing rules:

1). Make sure that you’re wringing every ounce of value from your existing lien lists by contacting them multiple times over a lengthier time period.

2). Never rely on a single prospecting method to bring in all your clients.

No business, no matter how small, should have less than three different methods for bringing in new leads. Tax lien marketing is lucrative and powerful, but it shouldn’t be the only trick up your sleeve. If you’re not simultaneously utilizing non-lien marketing to help bring in clients, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.… Continue reading

On the old tax lien database system, we got a lot of questions pertaining to why only so many liens were available for a given set of selection criteria. This is a very good question, and I will attempt to answer it here.

First and foremost, one must understand that liens are a finite resource. In other words, there are only a limited number of them. In 2010, the IRS filed 1.1 million Notices of Federal Tax Lien (NFTL). The vast majority of these liens were against individuals owing less than $10,000.

In Fiscal Year 2012, the IRS only filed 707,000 tax liens. That’s for the entire United States.

In 2013, the IRS only filed 602,005 tax liens.

So, the number of lien filings is going down. As of March 2012, the IRS changed the threshold for filing a lien, raising it from $5,000 to $10,000. Anybody with a lien filing less than that amount is a repeat offender, and is pyramiding their tax debt liability.

Let’s go back to that 707,000 liens filed in 2012. Keep in mind that, under most circumstances, we don’t collect lien data on liens less than $5,000. Therefore, those smaller liens won’t even be in our system, and those liens (for repeat offenders that are growing their tax debt) are usually only a couple thousand dollars.

Last year (2012), we collected data on about 250,000 federal tax liens. Since these liens are mostly $5k and above, this represents new tax debtors.

Think about a business that owes 941 taxes, and has for years. They could owe a total of $80,000, and are growing that by several thousand dollars each quarter. 941 debtors represent about 40% of all new debtor lien filings, but these same folks also have an additional 1 to 4 liens filed against them per year. When you have one existing debtor with up to 4 new liens filed per year, that’s a significant portion of the “missing” liens we’re not collecting.

Also consider your search criteria. If you are only searching for liens above $25,000, for example, then you’re simply searching above the range at which most tax liens are filed. In other words, there are simply fewer tax debtors that owe more than $25,000, in comparison to those that owe less than this amount. The percentage distribution in our system is skewed high because we cut off at the $5,000 mark, but even at … Continue reading

For those of you that specialize in assisting individual taxpayers instead of businesses, you may have noticed some recent upsets in the leads world. Due to increasing regulation and pressure from the Federal Trade Commission, it’s getting harder and harder to access individual taxpayers through the telephone. One of the largest list brokers in the country recently quit offering tax liens at all due to these issues.

Here at Tax Liens HQ, we are still offering 1040 tax lien leads, but we recently made the decision to no longer offer phone numbers on those leads, and I’d like to explain why that is and what your options are instead.

If you are calling individual consumers at all, the FTC requires that you have what is called a SAN number. This is a subscription number to the national Do Not Call list registry. Even if you purchase phone numbers from a list broker, you are still required to have your own SAN number and remove numbers from your list that are on the Do Not Call List, even if the list broker says they do it for you.

Subscribing to the Do Not Call list is not inconsequential. A SAN number that covers the entire United States costs around $15,000. However, this is nothing compared to the FTC fines for telemarketing to consumers without a SAN number. The fines can be as high as $11,000 PER PHONE CALL.

So what does this have to do with us no longer offering phone numbers? The FTC has recently begun to hold list brokers accountable for the actions of their customers. There is pending civil litigation around this issue, since depending on who you ask, the law doesn’t allow for this, but the FTC is doing it anyway. Since we are a fairly small “mom and pop” business, we simply cannot afford the liability exposure if the FTC were to make an issue with us providing phone numbers to our customers and our customers failed to obtain SAN numbers and comply with the Do Not Call List rules and the Telemarketing Sales Rule. So, long story short, our attorney told us to stop.

So where does this leave you for obtaining phone numbers? Check out various phone append services that exist online, and pick one that meets your needs.

Alternatively, have you considered direct mail? For the cost of a SAN number for the entire United States, you could … Continue reading