Bankruptcy Forms

• To claim any debts in bankruptcy, you must list them on your bankruptcy petition. In fact, you not only can list your IRS taxes in your bankruptcy forms, you must. Bankruptcy law requires debtors to include all liabilities in a bankruptcy petition or risk charges of fraud. You will generally list IRS tax debt on Bankruptcy Schedule E, "Creditors Holding Unsecured Priority Claims." Tax debt is considered a priority claim, as the IRS is one of the creditors that always gets paid ahead of general unsecured creditors such as credit card companies.
  
  

Age & Type of Taxes Owed

• For your IRS debt to qualify as dischargeable, it must meet certain requirements. Your IRS debt must be due to income taxes and not any other type of tax, such as payroll taxes. Additionally, the tax debt must be old. Specifically, you cannot discharge any IRS debt that is less than three years old, dated form the time your tax return was originally due to the day you file your bankruptcy petition.
  
  

Filing Your Tax Returns

• Another restriction on claiming IRS debt in your bankruptcy is that you must have filed a tax return for the tax year that you wish to have discharged. The court further requires that you filed that tax return at least two years before you submitted your bankruptcy petition. You also must not have submitted any fraudulent information with your tax return, such as a false Social Security number or name. Lastly, the IRS must have assessed the tax you seek to discharge at least 240 days before you file bankruptcy.
  
  

IRS Lien

• If the IRS has already placed a lien against your property, then you have missed the opportunity to discharge your tax debt. While bankruptcy can eliminate most or all of your debt, all liens survive bankruptcy, including IRS liens. If you filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you can either pay the lien outright or sell the attached property to satisfy the IRS. If you filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you can include the lien in the payments you make to the court.