Every IRS debt carries an expiration date. Section 6502 gives the government ten years from assessment to collect — the Collection Statute Expiration Date, or CSED — and when it passes, the liability dies. Not negotiated down. Dead, by operation of law. The IRS does not send a card announcing it.
Why Your CSED Is Never Simple
Ten years sounds easy to count. It almost never is, because the clock pauses for events scattered through your history: a bankruptcy stay plus six months, the pendency of an offer in compromise plus thirty days, a collection due process hearing, time outside the country, certain installment agreement periods. Each tax year has its own CSED, each tolling event has its own arithmetic, and the IRS's own computation is wrong often enough that checking it is standard practice in my office. The raw material is your account transcript — assessment dates, transaction codes, the full archaeology of your case.
The Calendar Is a Strategy
Here's the part most people miss: every collection decision either respects your CSED or spends it. A partial-pay installment agreement rides the clock to expiration. Currently not collectible status lets it run silently. An offer in compromise pauses it — which is sometimes exactly the wrong move for a debt eighteen months from death, and the IRS will happily let you make that mistake.
I've watched six-figure liabilities expire while the taxpayer made modest, legally appropriate payments under an agreement built around the calendar. The longer you wait blindly, the more they take. Know your dates, and the dates start working for you.