What can be done if someone sold real-estate or a company with a tax lien on it without disclosing this information?

True, I ask cause I have my lawyer on this issue right now, and I am about to get a company for free, but it will require a lot of work to rebuild the credit rating.

The lien actually decreases the worth of the real estate or company. And if the person sells it while not disclosing that information, then that means he is defrauding the purchaser.

So he will probably have to reverse the sale and compensate any losses the purchaser had (like for example if he needs to move, the defrauder will have to pay for the transport and lost time). Of course, if the defrauder has vanished, taking the money, the purchaser might be in trouble. But you will have to check details in your local laws.

In my country, every such sale has to be handled by a notary. Real estate sales need to be put down in the ground books of the municipality, too. And company sales require changes in the trade register. The notary is supposed to take care of that as well as check any liens and preemption to buy rights. So such a defraud is made impossible here.

Well like I said I have my lawyer on it, and we are in the early stages, but it looks like I may get the company for pennies on the dollar, then I will have to settle the IRS debt with another lawyer. When I bought the company I only bought a sell of assets not liabilities, per the contract so the seller is up the creek without a paddle.

Ok. So you’d better ask your lawyer about it. He’ll know the laws in your place and your contract better than we do. If you get lucky, the seller will have debts to the IRS and you ill have nothing more to do with that lien.

Liens are public record. They are recorded at the court house. It is easy to find this information before you purchase. That is one of the reasons a real estate agent is so important in a transaction. Then you can blame them for not pointing out the liens.

Yes the debt is not on our EIN number and it looks like all assets of the company will be our for pennies on the dollar. The only problem we are working to restore in the credit history of the company name, but I feel with about another year we will have this ironed out.

Well it would have been easy to find if they had given us the proper tax ID for this, and this was not a purchase of real estate but a purchase of data.