Tax Lien Filing Date
	. .     This page explains in summary how IRS tax liens are filed, how we collect them and how you receive them.   Click here to see an actual federal tax lien filed by IRS. This sample document is in Acrobat pdf format, you may download a free Acrobat reader from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html     What occurs before you receive your tax lien list IRS decides to file a Federal Tax Lien against a taxpayer. The IRS prepares the lien in their offices. The sample lien above was prepared on August 8, 2002 at Jacksonville, Florida. At this stage of the process the lien is still NOT a "public record", meaning no one has access to it except IRS.  This date is not available as a criterion when selecting your list, nor can you receive it in your list. IRS sends the lien to the county, in this case Okaloosa county Florida. Then the county files the lien. There is usually a 2 to 10 days gap from when the lien was prepared by IRS till when the county files the lien.  In our sample above the gap is 6 day, from 8/8/02 to 8/14/02.  In the above sample, the county filed the lien on August 14, 2002. At this step of the process the lien becomes a "public record" and may be viewed by anyone. The county stamp is seen on the center of the document. This is the date you receive in your list.  This is the date, that is used in your date criterion when your selecting the parameters of your list. Then our collector will visit the county and collect the information. This date is obviously after the the county filing date.  Our collectors visit the counties anywhere from several times per week to a few time a year depending on the quantity of records filed by a particular county.  The higher producing counties are visited more often than the lower producing counties. We call this the collection date. This date is not an available field, meaning you may not select your list based on this date, nor you may receive this date in your list.