There is a specific cruelty to discovering that the IRS can take your Social Security benefits.
You worked for decades. You paid into the system. You planned your retirement around that monthly payment — the consistent, predictable income that was supposed to form the foundation of your financial life in the years when you could no longer work. And now the IRS is taking 15% of it every month.
I'm Charles Rosselli, a Long Island tax attorney. The IRS levy on Social Security benefits is one of the most painful collection actions I deal with for Long Island clients — because the people it affects are often on fixed incomes, often facing the situation alone, and often deeply embarrassed to be dealing with a tax problem at a stage of life when they expected financial stability.
This article explains exactly how the IRS can take your Social Security, what it does to your retirement finances on Long Island, and why this problem is more serious than many retirees initially understand.
Yes, the IRS Can Take Your Social Security Benefits
This surprises people. Social Security benefits have a special, protected status in many legal contexts — they cannot be garnished by credit card companies, by most private creditors, by banks collecting on personal loans. The perception is that Social Security is untouchable.
The federal government is the exception to its own rule.
The Federal Payment Levy Program — the FPLP — allows the IRS to levy Social Security retirement, survivor, and disability benefits. Under this program, the IRS can take up to 15% of each monthly Social Security payment and apply it to your outstanding federal tax debt. The levy continues month after month, without end, until the full balance is paid or the levy is released.
Unlike a bank account levy — which is a one-time seizure of funds in the account on the day the levy is served — a Social Security levy is continuous. Every month, 15% is gone. Every month, the amount of money you have to live on is reduced by 15%. And on Long Island, where the cost of living is among the highest in the country, 15% of a Social Security check is not a rounding error.
What 15% of Your Social Security Means on Long Island
The average Social Security retirement benefit nationally is approximately $1,800 per month. Fifteen percent of that is $270. It sounds manageable in the abstract.
It is not manageable on Long Island.
The average property tax bill in Nassau County exceeds $11,000 per year — roughly $920 per month. In Suffolk County, the average is around $8,000 — roughly $670 per month. These are the baseline obligations Long Island homeowners face before considering utilities, groceries, transportation, insurance, medical costs, and everything else retirement actually requires.
A retiree living on $1,800 per month in Social Security, with a $900 monthly property tax obligation, was already navigating a tight budget. The IRS levy takes $270 off the top. That $270 may be the difference between making the property tax payment and falling behind. Between filling a prescription and skipping it. Between keeping the heat on in January and choosing between heat and food.
Long Island's cost of living does not bend for retirees on fixed incomes. The IRS levy does not either.
How the IRS Gets to Your Social Security
The Federal Payment Levy Program operates between the IRS and the Social Security Administration automatically. The IRS does not need to send a levy notice to your bank. It works directly with the SSA to redirect a portion of your benefit payment before it ever reaches you.
You receive a reduced payment. The difference goes to the IRS.
For some retirees, the first indication that the levy is in effect is the month their Social Security payment arrives short. They check their bank statement. They see a deposit, but it is less than expected. They may not understand why immediately. When they call Social Security or check their SSA account online, they discover that 15% has been redirected to the IRS.
The procedural prerequisites are the same as for other IRS levies — the IRS must have sent a Final Notice of Intent to Levy to your last known address and allowed 30 days to pass. But if that notice was sent to an outdated address, or if it arrived during a period when IRS correspondence was not being opened, the Social Security levy may appear to come out of nowhere.
The Particular Vulnerability of Long Island Retirees
Long Island retirees face a combination of circumstances that makes an IRS Social Security levy especially damaging.
Housing costs. The home that a Long Island retiree owns — paid off or nearly paid off over decades — carries property taxes that in Nassau and Suffolk County are among the highest in the United States. A retiree on Social Security whose income is being reduced by 15% every month may not be able to maintain those property tax payments. Falling behind on property taxes in New York creates its own cascade of problems, including potential local tax lien proceedings.
Medical costs. Older adults in fixed-income situations depend on predictable monthly cash flow to manage medical expenses — prescriptions, supplemental insurance premiums, co-pays, and out-of-pocket costs that Medicare does not cover. A 15% reduction in monthly income disrupts a carefully balanced medical expense budget.
Isolation from information. Many Long Island retirees are not closely connected to the kind of professional advisors who might have flagged a developing tax problem before it reached levy stage. Tax returns that were not filed. Income that was not reported correctly. A tax debt that accumulated quietly over years while the retiree's attention was elsewhere. By the time the Social Security levy appears, the problem has been developing for a long time without anyone in the retiree's life recognizing or addressing it.
The legacy of deceased spouses. I regularly work with Long Island widows and widowers who discovered, after the death of a spouse who handled the finances, that there were years of unfiled tax returns or significant unpaid balances. These individuals had no warning, no preparation, and no understanding of what they were inheriting. The first sign may be the Social Security levy.
The Balance Keeps Growing While the Levy Runs
Here is the detail that most retirees in this situation do not understand until they work through it carefully.
The IRS Social Security levy takes 15% of each monthly payment and applies it to the outstanding balance. But the outstanding balance is also accruing interest daily — at the federal short-term rate plus 3%, compounded daily — and continuing to accrue penalties on any unaddressed underlying assessment.
On a $40,000 balance, at current interest rates, the interest accruing monthly may be $250 to $300. The levy is collecting approximately $270 per month. In some situations, the levy is barely keeping pace with the interest, and the principal balance is barely moving. A retiree enduring a 15% reduction in their Social Security income every month for a year may find, at the end of that year, that the balance they owe has barely changed.
This is the trap. The levy feels like it is addressing the problem. The numbers show that it may not be.
Social Security Disability Recipients Are Not Protected
The Federal Payment Levy Program applies to Social Security disability benefits — SSDI — as well as retirement and survivor benefits. There is one important distinction: if a Social Security recipient's income falls below 250% of the federal poverty level, the IRS is supposed to screen the account out of the automated levy program.
In practice, this screening does not always work correctly. Individuals on SSDI whose incomes are near or below that threshold sometimes find themselves in the levy program anyway. And the threshold itself is modest — 250% of the poverty level is still a very low income on Long Island's cost of living scale.
SSI — Supplemental Security Income — is exempt from the FPLP levy. But many low-income individuals receive a combination of SSDI and SSI, and the SSDI portion remains subject to levy even when SSI is protected.
The Tax Debt Behind the Levy
A Social Security levy does not appear without a history of tax debt, notices, and escalating collection action. By the time the IRS is levying someone's Social Security benefits, there has typically been a significant period during which the underlying problem could have been addressed — and was not.
This is not a judgment. It is a pattern I see regularly. The debt accumulated during working years. Retirement brought reduced income and reduced engagement with financial matters. The IRS notices arrived and were set aside. The Final Notice of Intent to Levy arrived and was not acted on. And now the Social Security check is short every month.
The underlying debt still exists. The interest is still running. The levy may not even be keeping pace with what is accruing. And if there are other assets — a paid-off Long Island home with significant equity, savings accounts, investment accounts — those remain reachable through other IRS collection actions.
The Social Security levy is often the most visible problem. It is rarely the only one.
Why Hiring a Long Island Tax Attorney Is Different From a CPA or a National Tax Resolution Firm
When you are a retiree on a fixed income with an IRS levy running against your Social Security benefits, you need representation that understands your specific situation — not a call center that processes cases by volume.
A CPA or accountant can review your tax situation and tell you what you owe. They are not equipped to represent you in IRS collection proceedings, assert legal arguments for levy release on hardship grounds, or take your case to Appeals. And they are not trained to build the detailed financial analysis — based on Long Island's actual cost of living — that demonstrates why the current levy is creating economic hardship.
A national tax resolution firm will take your call and take your money. They will tell you they can resolve your situation quickly. What you will get is a case manager who will follow a standard script and pursue the most accessible resolution — which may or may not be the right one for your situation. I have spoken with Long Island retirees who paid national firms significant fees while their Social Security was being levied month after month, the balance barely moving, and the firm telling them to be patient. These firms are not accountable to you in any meaningful way.
A Long Island tax attorney who handles IRS collection cases as their primary practice brings something different:
Attorney-client privilege over everything you tell me. Your full financial history, your assets, your family situation — all of it is protected when you share it with me.
Legal authority at every level. Hardship levy release arguments. Collection Due Process hearings. IRS Appeals. Tax Court. These are legal tools that require an attorney. A CPA and a case manager cannot access them.
An understanding of Long Island retiree finances. I know what it costs to live on Long Island. I know what property taxes look like in Nassau and Suffolk County. I know how to present your actual financial situation to the IRS in a way that reflects reality — not national averages that have no relationship to your life.
Personal accountability. I am here. You can reach me. For a retiree dealing with an IRS problem alone — perhaps for the first time, perhaps after the death of a spouse who handled these matters — having a real person who knows your case and is directly accountable to you matters in a way it might not at an earlier stage of life.
Your Monthly Income Is Being Reduced. This Will Not Improve on Its Own.
Every month the levy runs, 15% of your Social Security is gone. The balance may barely be moving. The interest is accruing. Other collection actions may be building in the background.
This does not improve on its own.
The Tax Problem Law Center is based on Long Island and represents retirees and individuals throughout Nassau County, Suffolk County, and New York State facing IRS Social Security levies, hardship situations, and all forms of IRS collection matters.
Contact our office to see if we can be of help. You will speak directly with Long Island tax attorney Charles Rosselli. Let's talk about what is happening to your benefits, what the full picture looks like, and what can be done.