Plenty of people are surprised to learn this: income taxes can be discharged in bankruptcy. Not always, not all of them, and not without getting the timing exactly right — but the door is real, and for the right case it's the cleanest exit in the entire tax code.
The Three Timing Rules
Income tax debt is generally dischargeable when it clears three tests. The return was due, including extensions, more than three years before the bankruptcy filing. The return was actually filed more than two years before. And the tax was assessed more than 240 days before. All three, on every tax year you want wiped out.
Then come the traps. Events like a prior bankruptcy, an offer in compromise, or a collection due process hearing pause these clocks. Fraud and willful evasion kill discharge entirely. And years where the IRS filed a substitute return for you follow different, harsher rules. The only way to compute the dates reliably is from your IRS account transcripts — Transaction Code by Transaction Code.
Why Florida Cases Are Different
Florida's exemptions — homestead chief among them — change the bankruptcy math in ways out-of-state firms routinely miss. A Pinellas or Hillsborough homeowner with old tax debt and a protected house is playing a fundamentally different game than the same debtor in most other states. Tampa Bay cases are filed in the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, and the interplay between federal discharge rules and Florida property law is where these cases are won.
I built a free discharge calculator on this site that runs the three rules against your dates. Run it. If the answer is close, the timing of your filing date may be worth more than any payment plan the IRS will ever offer you.