How To Remove State Tax Lien

How To Remove State Tax Lien

Perhaps the most difficult thing I had to accomplish was to remove state tax lien from my credit report. Tax liens in general are hard to remove, but the IRS has recently made it much easier to remove a lien, if you follow their guidelines. However, states all vary when it comes to their own laws and regulations. I devised a way to remove varying degrees of tax liens and public records. While it might not be the most ethical approach, it worked in my case. I have actually used this approach twice now, and it worked both times.  Here is my tactic on how to remove state tax lien.

1. Order your LexisNexis reports. There are 4 different consumer reports that Lexis Nexis maintains. A couple of them have public records, liens and judgments on them. This is essential to know, because the credit bureaus use these reports to confirm public records, such as liens and judgments. That is correct. The credit bureaus do not confirm directly with states and use reports such as these to confirm. While not ALL public records are confirmed through LexisNexis reports, most are. So you would be advised to first pull these reports. You have to do it my mail, and information is at LexisNexis.com – These reports take about 3 weeks to obtain. Once you receive the reports you can proceed to attempt to remove state tax lien. 
2. Once the reports arrive, you need to locate the public information related to the corresponding data on your credit report as reported in your LexisNexis report. At this point, you need to do a formal dispute with LexisNexis. This has to be done by mail, or by phone. This cannot be done electronically. It would help if there was something wrong with the listing, perhaps an address issue. I used a notarized affidavit indicating I did not live at the address listed for this specific listing in the LexisNexis report. I am not advising you lie. What you choose to do is your own business. You could just dispute and indicate it is not yours. Keep in mind, they do not fall under the same dispute guidelines as the credit bureaus.
3. Once LexisNexis removes the listing in question, you can then successfully dispute the listing on the credit reports. It is highly likely it will be removed, because they use the LexisNexis report to confirm information. If you dispute through the credit bureaus, use the dispute code “Not Mine”. You should have success and remove state tax lien.

You will be stunned to see how much information is on those LexisNexis reports.  I would dispute and remove ANYTHING on their you feel is questionable, as the credit bureaus all use LexisNexis reports to verify certain aspects of their reporting.

This isn’t fool proof and it might be hit or miss. In my situation, it worked to remove state tax lien from only two of my three credit reports.

Additional steps:

The second time I used this tactic, LexisNexis did not delete the listing I requested. Once they refused to delete the listing, I sent a second dispute to them via mail, and this time I used to certified mail return receipt. As soon as the green card was signed, I drafted a CFPB dispute to the credit bureaus. On each dispute, I scanned the LexisNexis document, which doesn’t show complete social security numbers. I highlighted the listing, indicated to the bureau that there is no legal way they can confirm this is my listing on just the last 4 of my social security number. I also attached the green card to the dispute, indicating I have informed LexisNexis that this listing is not mine, and that I will be pursuing legal action against the credit bureau if they do not remove this account. Once again, two of the three removed within a week.

The moral of the story is, the less information the credit bureaus can confirm, the better off your chance of disputing it away. Try the first sequence initially, and if it doesn’t work, move on to the second.

Credit repair requires outside-the-box thinking, and potentially unethical activity. It is up to you to decide how far you want to take things. I was able to remove state tax lien from two of my three reports, and I consider that a win.