An IRS offset happens when a government agency tells the IRS to hold your refund to pay a debt like student loans or child support. Call the Treasury's automated system to check if one is pending against you. If it is, you have to contact the agency that requested it and negotiate to get it removed.
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An offset happens when the IRS keeps part or all of your refund. If you're delinquent on student loans or government loans or child support, or you're behind on other government obligations, you should be aware that they have the ability, because they are the government— that goes for the state as well as for the federal government— that they have the ability to send a request to the IRS to offset your tax refund. Let's say, for example, you owe the government $700. And your tax refund was $1,000. The IRS would withhold the $700 and send it to the government department that asked for that money. And then the remaining $300 would be sent to you by the IRS. And this is called an offset. An offset doesn't happen every time that you're delinquent on government loans or child support and things like that. It only happens when that government entity decides that they want to try to collect on that money through your tax refund, if you actually are getting a tax refund. If you end up owing taxes when you file your tax return, then this situation wouldn't end up affecting you. It would only apply to you if you have a tax refund coming and there's an offset already scheduled for your account. If you do have an outstanding delinquent loan with the government or you owe back child support, you won't necessarily be able to stop this offset from happening and taking your tax refund unless you just don't file. But then you risk the chance of losing your refund because you only have 3 years to claim the refund. So I wouldn't necessarily say you should not file just because there's an offset against you. The way to find out if there's an offset against your account, all you all you have to do is call the U.S. Treasury. When you call this number, follow the prompts for finding out if you have an offset. You won't have to speak to a person, it's all automated. They'll let you know who you owe, and they'll provide you the contact information to reach out to them. If an offset has been scheduled, the only thing you can do is contact that department that ordered the offset in the first place and see if you can work something out and have them remove that offset, because it's not going to go away. When you owe the government, you got to pay them.
