IRS Collections Statistics: Liens, Levies, and Seizures by Year

What the data shows

The IRS publishes annual counts of its collection actions in the IRS Data Book. Three of those measures show how aggressively the agency pursues unpaid taxes: Notices of Federal Tax Lien filed, levies requested on third parties, and property seizures. All three fell steeply during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and none has returned to its pre-2020 level.

Lien filings tell the clearest story. They peaked at 1,096,376 in FY2010, drifted down through the 2010s after a 2011 policy change, then dropped off a cliff during the pandemic, bottoming at 157,323 in FY2022 before partly recovering to 214,099 in FY2025. That FY2025 figure is still about 80% below the 2010 peak and about 61% below the FY2019 pre-pandemic level.

Federal tax lien filings by year

A Notice of Federal Tax Lien is the public claim the IRS files against your property when you owe back taxes. The chart below shows how many the IRS filed each fiscal year from 2014 to 2025. Hover any point for the exact figure.

Filings were already trending down before the pandemic, from 535,580 in FY2014 to 410,220 in FY2018, after the IRS raised the dollar threshold for filing a lien. The pandemic then drove a much sharper fall: from 543,604 in FY2019 to 157,323 in FY2022, a 71% drop in three years. Filings have risen each year since, but slowly.

Levies and seizures

A levy lets the IRS take money or property to satisfy a tax debt, most commonly by garnishing wages or seizing funds from a bank account. The Data Book counts levy notices requested on third parties, such as employers and banks. These fell even harder in raw terms: from nearly 2 million in FY2014 to 273,286 in FY2022, before recovering to 339,137 in FY2025. Measured from the FY2019 baseline, levies were down about 65% at the FY2022 trough and remain roughly 57% below that baseline.

Seizures, where the IRS takes and sells physical assets, are far rarer and follow a different path. They never recovered after the pandemic. Seizures fell from 228 in FY2019 to 77 in FY2020, and after small fluctuations they reached just 50 in FY2025, the lowest figure in the entire 12-year series.

Enforcement compared

Because liens, levies, and seizures happen at very different volumes (levies in the hundreds of thousands to millions, seizures in the dozens), the chart below indexes all three to their FY2019 level, set to 100. That puts them on one scale so you can compare how far each fell. Every line dropping well below the dashed 100 baseline after 2019 shows the post-COVID collapse across all three tools.

Why IRS collections dropped

Three factors stand out in the public record:

• The 2011 Fresh Start policy change. The IRS raised the dollar threshold for automatically filing a lien from $5,000 to $10,000 and made liens easier to withdraw. This drove the long decline from the FY2010 peak through the 2010s.
• The pandemic collection pause. The IRS suspended most new collection activity from March 30 to July 15, 2020 under its People First Initiative, which cut filings sharply in FY2020.
• Extended notice suppression and backlog. The IRS paused many automated collection notices well beyond 2020 while it worked through a processing backlog, keeping lien and levy volumes low through FY2022 and FY2023.

The recovery since FY2022 reflects the IRS gradually restarting automated collection notices. Filings remain far below pre-pandemic norms, but the trend is upward for liens and levies.

What this means if you owe the IRS

Fewer liens and levies do not mean the IRS has stopped collecting, and they do not change what you owe. Interest and penalties continue to accrue on unpaid balances regardless of enforcement volume, and the agency has signaled that automated collection activity is ramping back up. A lower filing rate is a snapshot of agency activity, not a reason to wait.

If you have a balance you cannot pay, the practical question is which resolution path fits your situation. These guides explain the main options:

• Currently Not Collectible status, if you cannot pay anything right now
• IRS payment plans, to pay over time and stop further penalties
• Offer in Compromise, to settle for less than the full balance if you qualify
• Compare vetted tax relief providers

Full data and sources

Every figure on this page is taken from the IRS Data Book (Publication 55B), in the table titled Delinquent Collection Activities by Fiscal Year (numbered Table 16, then 25, then 27, and currently Table 4-1 across editions). Levies are the count of notices of levy requested on third parties; seizures are conducted by the Field Collection program. The FY2023 seizure figure uses the IRS's corrected value.

Primary source: IRS Data Book (Publication 55B), Statistics of Income division, Internal Revenue Service.

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