<prompt> Human: Ok, so the title explains most of it. My sister had some trouble with taxes one year, didnt file on time and then just started avoiding it for subsequent years. Now her chickens have come home to roost and her bank account is locked and her wages being garnished. Also, apparently in our state the interest rate shes being charged is 18 so its basically 10k in credit card debt. She basically lives paycheck to paycheck, in the sense that shes never out of money, but never really has excess either.Shes not a redditor so I offered to seek out advice on her behalf. Is there some lawyer magic that can reduce the amount she has to pay? Some way to get the interest rate down? Could she pay a lesser amount if its a lump sum right away? In the last case I would offer to pay it for her. Im not wealthy but single and frugal with a good job so as much as it would suck to lose up to 10,000 I can take the hit.After reading the responses Im not considering this option anymoreedit I should have mentioned this started with an unusual income situation at her previous job where the default withholdings were not being taken out of her paychecks. When it came time to file she owed a relative lot of money despite not really earning a ton yearly. Also, I believe she earns around 16-18 dollars an hour and is salaried, but also I dont think she works 40 hour weeks so Im not quite sure what that means. Her car is on its last legs and she doesnt have a car fund started, so thats a time bomb waiting to go off as well.Assistant: Are you certain she owes 10k? When you dont file returns and the government auto-calculates what you owe, they often take a worst case look at your situation. If you actually complete returns for the years you may find out she owes less.10k is a lot of money to owe in taxes. Its hard to get that deep in the hole without doing something stupid sorry. Did she work for herself and not pay the taxes or completely fudge her withholding numbers? If shes just a regular employee of a company and withholding normally it would be fairly impressive to be able to rack up a 10k debt.Human: If you actually complete returns for the years you may find out she owes less.Interesting, and thank you. And no, Im not 100 sure a little over 10k was just the number she gave me.Its hard to get that deep in the hole without doing something stupid sorry. Yeah agreed. For the life of me I cant understand having a problem this bigbut manageable and not dealing with it for years. it would be fairly impressive to be able to rack up a 10k debt.I honestly got the impression that this may have been like 4-5 years in the making. So, even with not owing a lot in taxes each year 18 in interest over that long of a period would be a lot.Assistant: The problem is that by default, most of the taxes that she owes should have been withheld from her paycheck to begin with. Many most? people get money back when they file a return. The only way I can imagine her getting 10k of debt is if she actively screwed up her taxes. Simply ignoring taxes shouldnt cause her issue.Human: She mentioned something about the origins of this. She works taking care of autistic children and has multiple clients. It was something about the work paying her by individual clients so... the paychecks were for 13 of what she actually earned in a year and practically nothing was withheld when actually she should have been having a ton more withheld and when it came time to file taxes actually owed the government a relative lot of money, despite not earning that much at all. I probably dont have that exactly right, but it was something along those lines.And then she got flustered dealing with that at tax time, missed the deadline, and that was the start of this situation.  <response>: Sounds like she may have been a 1099 employee, basically a contractor. This makes some sense, but all shed have had to do was take her paperwork to any tax preparer and taken care of it.If I had to guess, she may have started that the first year, found out she owed several hundred or even a couple grand in total taxes, got overwhelmed since she couldnt afford it, and instead of asking for help then, even from the government, went into detail about it.I am not sure if its mentioned elsewhere, but I assume this means she also owes money to any state and local tax entities that could also come after her eventually. So dont just write her a check. Make her do the work of figuring out exactly what the options are, who she owes money to, etc. She may even want to take those years of paperwork assuming theyre available anywhere to a tax preparer to review. 