My Dad Died With No Estate – Why Does the IRS Keep Asking for Money?

Getting out of paying taxes is an extremely difficult thing to do. Sure, there are legal loopholes people can use to lower their tax bills. But at the end of the day, the IRS will stop at nothing to get the money its owed.

For some people, this means having their wages garnished. For retirees, it could mean having a portion of their Social Security benefits held back until their IRS debt is satisfied.

Believe it or not, people can’t even get out of owing taxes by dying. If a person passes away and owes the IRS money at the time, the IRS can go after their estate to get paid.

But when there’s no estate to go after, the IRS needs to cut its losses. That doesn’t mean it won’t keep trying, though.

In this Reddit post, we have someone who’s frustrated because their father passed away in 2018 with no estate. Yet the IRS keeps asking for money the father owed.

The poster doesn’t know what to do. But in this case, their best bet may be to do nothing.

Sometimes it pays not to engage

There can be serious consequences, including jail time, for tax evasion. But for better or worse, being deceased does get a person out of going to jail.

If the poster’s father did indeed owe money to the IRS but passed away without assets, the IRS can’t do much about it. The poster isn’t liable for that tax bill because it wasn’t theirs.

Now had the poster inherited assets from their father, the IRS would potentially have first dibs on the estate, so to speak. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

If the IRS keeps sending letters to the father asking for money, the poster should just ignore them or return them unopened. A good idea is to write that the recipient has passed away and have the letter returned to the IRS so that they can update their records.

Another thing the poster could potentially do is get a copy of their father’s death certificate and send it to the IRS asking them to update their records.

One Reddit user warned that the IRS might try to make the poster feel that they’re responsible for paying their father’s tax debt. That’s a trap the poster shouldn’t fall into.

When all else fails, get help

So far, it does not seem like the IRS is going after the poster. But if things change, the poster might need to get either a tax professional or a tax attorney to advocate on their behalf.

If the poster truly inherited no assets as they claim, then there’s little the IRS should be able to do. But the IRS has a way of sounding intimidating. So it would be understandable for the poster to want some professional guidance.

Either way, the poster should not feel too concerned about being on the hook for their father’s tax bill. If they did not inherit assets, there’s nothing for the IRS to go after.

With any luck, the IRS will stop wasting its time so the poster doesn’t feel harassed, and so the agency doesn’t use valuable resources going after money that’s not collectible.

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