Your tax debt has an expiration date - ten years from each assessment, after which the debt dies, liens release by law, and collection must stop. The date is computable today from your own transcripts, and computing it reorders every decision that follows. Run the calculation in three steps.
Step One: Date Every Assessment
Pull account transcripts for every balance year and list each assessment with its date - the original return assessment, audit additions, penalty assessments. Each runs its own ten-year clock from its own date: a 2016 return filed late in 2019 was assessed in 2019 and runs to 2029, and one tax year routinely carries multiple expiration dates, each governing its slice of the balance.
Step Two: Add the Pauses
The clock stops for events that legally block collection: a pending offer in compromise tolls for its duration plus 30 days; a timely collection due process hearing tolls while pending; bankruptcy tolls for the case plus six months; innocent spouse requests and extended periods abroad toll their durations. Each event posts as dated transcript entries - sum the pauses and slide each expiration out accordingly. Then check the IRS's own math: tolling double-counted, events miscoded, pauses applied to clocks they do not affect - the errors run in the government's favor with remarkable consistency until challenged, and collection occasionally continues past dates already expired.
Step Three: Flip the Strategy if the Date Is Close
Years remaining: settlements and agreements compete on their merits. Months remaining: the physics invert - the winning postures let the clock run, hardship status and partial-pay agreements pausing nothing and retiring nothing, while the catastrophic move is the doomed offer that freezes the very clock that was saving you. Expect collection interest to rise near the end, not fall, and never casually sign anything that could extend what should expire. I run this computation as the first dollar of work on every debt past its seventh birthday, and finding a near-dead one is a reliable pleasure of this practice. Send the transcripts.