You can sell a house with a tax lien on it, and the sale itself is often how the lien gets paid off. The harder question is not whether you can sell but which lien you're dealing with and how much time you have, because a county property tax lien and a federal income tax lien put very different clocks on your decision.
Every seller situation is different, and a tax lien is one of those topics where the honest answer depends on your entire financial picture rather than a one-size-fits-all rule. So let me start with the part that gives people the most relief: a tax lien does not lock you out of selling your home. You can list it, accept an offer, and close. In a lot of cases, the sale is the cleanest way to settle the tax debt for good.
What a lien actually changes is the order of operations. A lien is a legal claim a government attaches to your property because a tax went unpaid. It does not mean the government has taken your home, and it does not freeze the home in place. It is the government's way of making sure it gets paid if and when the property sells. The Internal Revenue Service describes a lien as the government securing its interest in your property and draws a sharp line between a lien, which is a claim, and a levy, which is an actual seizure. Those are two very different things, and confusing them is where a lot of unnecessary panic comes from.
Here is the piece most articles gloss over, and it is the one I want you to walk away with: not all tax liens behave the same way. A county property tax lien and a federal income tax lien sit in different positions relative to your mortgage, follow different rules, and put different amounts of time on the clock. Treating them as one thing is how sellers end up surprised at the closing table. The rest of this guide is built around figuring out which lien you have, where it stands in line, and what that means for your timeline. At AmeriSave, the conversations we have with homeowners in this spot almost always come back to those same three questions.
One more framing point before we get into the specifics. The market backdrop in this cycle is unusually favorable for sellers carrying a lien, and that changes the math in your favor. National data from the property analytics firm Cotality, formerly CoreLogic, put total homeowner equity at roughly $17 trillion at the close of the most recent year measured, with the average mortgaged homeowner sitting on about $295,000 in equity. Compare that to the last housing downturn, when large numbers of owners owed more than their homes were worth and had nothing to work with. Today, most sellers have real equity, which means the question is usually not whether there is enough money to clear the lien. It is whether you handle the process in the right order and on the right timeline.
Before you can plan anything, you need to know which government filed the claim and for which unpaid tax. There are three you're likely to encounter, and they are not interchangeable.
This is the most common one homeowners run into, and it comes from your city or county. If property taxes go unpaid, the local taxing authority can attach a lien to the home. The detail that matters: in most places this lien is automatic in the sense that it arises from the unpaid tax itself, without the county needing to file anything special, and it typically takes a senior position over almost everything else recorded against the property, including a first mortgage that was recorded years earlier. That seniority is the whole reason property tax liens deserve your attention first.
It helps to understand how people end up here, because it is rarely simple neglect. For most homeowners with a mortgage, property taxes are not paid directly to the county at all. They are collected monthly inside the mortgage payment and held in an escrow, and the servicer pays the county on the homeowner's behalf. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes escrow as the account a servicer uses to pay property taxes and homeowners insurance so the borrower does not have to budget for those large bills separately. The trouble starts when that arrangement breaks. An escrow account can run short when the tax bill rises faster than the monthly collection, which produces an escrow shortage and a higher payment the following year. A homeowner who pays taxes directly, with no escrow, can simply lose track of a once-a-year or twice-a-year bill. And after a loan is paid off, the escrow disappears entirely, and the responsibility for paying the county lands back on the owner who may not be used to handling it. Each of those is a path to a delinquency the homeowner did not see coming, which is why the AmeriSave team treats an unexpected lien as a process to work through rather than a character flaw. Unpaid property taxes are a national-scale issue rather than a rare one. The National Tax Lien Association has reported that roughly $22 billion in property taxes goes unpaid across the country in a single year. You're not in an unusual situation, and there is a well-worn path out of it.
If you live in a state that collects income tax and you fall behind, your state's department of revenue can file its own lien against your home. State rules vary widely, which is genuinely the case here and not a throwaway line. Some state liens behave like the federal lien and fall in line by recording date; others carry stronger priority. Because the practice differs so much from state to state, this is the lien where a quick conversation with a tax attorney licensed in your state pays for itself. You can read the statutes yourself, but a local attorney knows how your state actually collects in practice.
This one comes from the IRS when federal income taxes go unpaid after the agency has assessed the balance and sent notice. A federal lien attaches to essentially everything you own and to property you acquire while it is in force. It is the lien with the most established set of tools for getting a sale done, which we’ll walk through in detail. It is worth knowing that the IRS does not file a public Notice of Federal Tax Lien on every balance. Under the agency's Fresh Start changes, the IRS generally does not file that public notice until the assessed balance reaches $10,000, though it keeps the discretion to file at a lower balance when it believes collection is at risk. So a smaller federal balance may be sitting in the background without a recorded lien clouding your title at all, which is one of the first distinctions to pin down before assuming a lien is even on the title.
Figuring out which of these you have is step one, and it is not always obvious from a single letter in the mail. A title search will surface every recorded claim against the property, which is exactly why title work happens early in any sale. If you're working with AmeriSave on the financing side of your next move, this is something we flag upfront so it is handled long before it can threaten a closing date.
This is the single most useful concept in the whole topic, and it is the one I wish more sellers understood before they got a contract. Liens get paid in a priority order when a property sells or is foreclosed, and that order decides who gets the money and who might get nothing. The general rule is first in time, first in right: whoever recorded first gets paid first. But tax liens are where the exceptions live.
A property tax lien is what people call a super lien. It jumps ahead of earlier-recorded claims, including your mortgage, so when the home sells, the county's unpaid taxes get satisfied before the mortgage lender sees a dollar. That sounds alarming, but in a normal sale with enough equity it is a non-event, because everything gets paid in order out of the proceeds. Where it becomes a real problem is foreclosure: because the property tax lien outranks the mortgage, a county can move to foreclose for unpaid taxes even when you're perfectly current on your mortgage payments. Your lender is not protecting you from that, because the lender is behind the county in line.
A federal tax lien works differently. Against your mortgage, it generally follows that first-in-time rule, so a mortgage recorded before the IRS filed its notice usually keeps its senior spot. That ordering is the reason the IRS built a specific process to step aside for a sale, which we’ll get to. The practical takeaway is this. With a property tax lien, the clock you're watching is your county's foreclosure and redemption timeline. With a federal lien, the clock is the IRS processing time for clearing its claim off the property. Same word, lien, but two completely different countdowns. When a homeowner brings one of these to us, the first thing the AmeriSave team sorts out is which of the two clocks is running, because the entire plan hangs on that answer.
Think of it the way I describe it to homeowners: the question is not really whether you can sell, it is which clock is already running and how much time is left on it. Maybe a federal lien with a healthy equity cushion gives you months of breathing room to do the paperwork properly. But a county that has already scheduled a tax sale gives you a hard, unforgiving deadline. The strategy follows the clock, not the other way around.
Because the property tax clock is the more urgent one, it is worth understanding what it looks like in practice. When taxes go unpaid, a county does not seize the home overnight. The typical sequence runs through delinquency, then a public tax sale, then a redemption period, then, only if nothing is resolved, a final transfer of title. In many states the county sells a tax lien certificate to an investor rather than the home itself, and that investor collects the back taxes plus interest and penalties if you redeem. Most owners do redeem, which is the point worth holding onto: the vast majority of these situations never end in a lost home. Industry research has long shown that only a small fraction of delinquent accounts ever reach a final tax deed sale, because owners pay, refinance, or sell well before the clock runs out.
What varies enormously from state to state is how much time the redemption period gives you and how high the interest runs while it ticks. Some states allow a year or more to redeem; others move faster. Some attach steep statutory interest that the redeeming owner must pay on top of the taxes. This is precisely why a property tax lien rewards early action so heavily. The earlier you sell or pay, the less interest and penalty you owe, and the more room you have before any sale deadline arrives. Once a tax sale is scheduled, the window for negotiating narrows sharply, and once a redemption period expires, it closes for good. A homeowner who understands this timeline and acts in the delinquency window almost always keeps control of the outcome. A homeowner who waits until a sale notice arrives is reacting to someone else's calendar. When AmeriSave talks with a homeowner weighing a sale against an existing property tax lien, the first thing we want to know is exactly where they sit on that timeline, because everything else flows from how much runway is left.
Once you know which lien you have and where it stands, the next question is pure arithmetic. Will the sale produce enough to pay your mortgage balance, your closing costs, and the tax debt? When the answer is yes, the lien is usually handled at closing without any special application. The settlement agent pays each claim in priority order out of the proceeds, the lien is released, and the title clears for your buyer. This is the ordinary, uneventful path, and with equity levels where they currently sit it is also the most common one.
Let me put real numbers on it, because this is how I work through it with a borrower. Say your home is worth $400,000 and you owe $250,000 on your mortgage. You also have a $20,000 property tax lien. At closing, the proceeds pay the $20,000 in back taxes first because the property tax lien sits senior, then the $250,000 mortgage, then your selling costs. If your real estate commission and closing costs run, say, $28,000, you walk away with roughly $102,000 and a clean title. The lien never blocked the sale; it just got paid in its proper place in line. This is the scenario where a homeowner often calls AmeriSave already worried, and the relief on the other end of the conversation is real once they see the lien is simply another line on the settlement statement.
Now change one number and watch the situation flip. Same $400,000 sale price, but this time you owe $360,000 on the mortgage and carry a $20,000 federal tax lien. Now $400,000 does not stretch to cover a $360,000 mortgage, a $20,000 tax debt, and tens of thousands in selling costs. This is the scenario where you cannot simply sell and pay everyone from the proceeds, and it is exactly where the special tools in the next section exist. The difference between these two examples is not the lien. It is your equity, or said another way, your loan-to-value: how much you owe set against what the home is worth. The first seller sits near 63% loan-to-value with plenty of cushion; the second is at 90% on the mortgage alone, and 95% once the lien is counted, which is what leaves no room for selling costs. That is why getting an honest read on your home's value and your payoff balances is the first concrete thing to do.
Getting those payoff figures right is more involved than it sounds, especially the tax side. Mortgage payoffs are straightforward to request from your servicer. The lien payoff is the one people underestimate, because penalties and interest keep accruing, so the number on an old notice is rarely the number you owe today. For a federal balance, you can get a current payoff by contacting the IRS Centralized Lien Operation directly. When AmeriSave helps a homeowner map out a move that involves an existing lien, nailing down the real, current payoff on every claim is the first thing we line up, because every later decision depends on that figure being accurate.
Here is a contrast I use a lot, because two homeowners can look identical on the surface and need completely different plans. Picture two neighbors in the same Dallas-Fort Worth subdivision, both with homes worth about $400,000 and both carrying a $20,000 tax lien. The first owes $250,000 on the mortgage, so a sale clears everything with room to spare, and the lien is a closing-table footnote. The second owes $375,000, refinanced near the top of the market, and is barely above water once selling costs are counted. Same house, same lien, same neighborhood, but the first neighbor sells freely and the second needs an IRS discharge or a payoff plan before a sale can work. That is the whole point: the lien is identical, the equity is not, and the equity is what decides the path. Borrowing your neighbor's plan because your homes look alike is the fastest way to choose the wrong one.
When a federal tax lien is in the picture and the sale will not cover it, the IRS is not the brick wall people imagine. The agency publishes a clear process specifically so a federal lien does not block a sale or a refinance, and it has been operating an expedited version of that process for financially distressed homeowners for years. The key is using the right tool for what you're actually doing, because two of them get mixed up constantly, even in published guides.
A discharge removes the federal tax lien from one specific property so the sale can close, even though you still owe the underlying tax. This is the tool for a sale. You apply with the IRS Application for Certificate of Discharge of Property From Federal Tax Lien, and Publication 783 walks through how to prepare it. The IRS instructions ask you to submit the application at least 45 days before the closing or settlement date, so this is not something to start the week of closing. The agency generally grants a discharge when the sale will pay the government its share of the proceeds, or when your remaining property still secures the IRS's interest, or when the government's interest in that specific property has no value because senior claims eat up the equity.
There are real requirements attached, and they exist to prevent gaming the system. The IRS will want a valid sales contract, not a hypothetical sale. It will want a professional appraisal showing the home is selling at fair market value, because it will reject a discounted sale to a friend or relative. And it will want a draft closing statement showing exactly where every dollar of the proceeds is going. One thing worth knowing if you're selling and relocating: the IRS allows a request for a relocation expense allowance that can let you keep a limited amount of the proceeds for moving costs rather than sending every dollar to the government.
A subordination does not remove the lien. It moves the federal lien down a notch so another creditor, usually a new mortgage lender, can take a senior position. This is the tool for a refinance, not a sale. You apply with the IRS Application for Certificate of Subordination of Federal Tax Lien, with Publication 784 as the guide. The IRS generally agrees to subordinate when doing so ultimately helps it collect, for example when refinancing into a lower payment frees up cash that can go toward the tax debt. If you're weighing whether to sell or to refinance and stay, that decision deserves its own conversation, and it is one AmeriSave's team has with homeowners regularly, because the right answer depends entirely on your equity, your rate, and your goals rather than on what a neighbor down the street did.
I want to flag the discharge-versus-subordination mix-up directly, because I’ve seen it trip people up. If you're selling, you generally want a discharge. If you're refinancing, you generally want a subordination. Reaching for the wrong form costs you weeks you may not have. When you're not sure which path fits, that is the moment to bring in a tax professional, and to make sure whoever is handling your closing knows about the lien early enough to coordinate with the IRS.
Sometimes the sale genuinely will not cover the tax debt, or you would rather resolve the taxes before you ever list. A few paths exist, and the right one depends on the type of tax, the amount, and your finances. Here is how I would think through them. Maybe a payment plan does not make sense for one borrower because they have strong equity and just want the lien gone before listing. But for a borrower with little equity and steady income, a payment plan that leads to a lien withdrawal might be exactly right. The path follows the situation, not the other way around.
A personal loan is another route some homeowners use to pay off a tax debt before listing, though not every lender will extend credit to a borrower with unpaid taxes on record. Whichever path fits your situation, the theme is the same one that runs through this whole topic: every borrower situation is different, and the option that was right for someone else may be the wrong one for you. The fastest way to walk yourself into trouble is shopping with someone else's bank account instead of looking honestly at your own numbers.
Two of these options deserve a closer look, because they are the ones homeowners most often misunderstand. The installment agreement is the workhorse. For a federal balance, a direct debit installment agreement does more than spread out payments. The IRS will generally hold off on filing a public Notice of Federal Tax Lien while you're in good standing on one, and for balances of $25,000 or less, making a few consecutive on-time payments can qualify you to have an already-filed lien withdrawn from the public record entirely. Withdrawal is the outcome you want, because it erases the filing rather than just stamping it satisfied, which is cleaner for any future financing. If you expect to apply for a mortgage with AmeriSave down the road, that distinction is worth caring about, since a withdrawn lien leaves the cleanest possible record. The catch is that you have to actually be current; the protection evaporates if you default, and the IRS keeps discretion to file a lien at any balance when it thinks collection is genuinely at risk. So an installment agreement is a real shield, but only while you hold up your end.
The offer in compromise is the one wrapped in the most hype, and it is worth being clear-eyed about it. It can settle a federal or state income tax debt for less than the full amount, but the IRS approves it only when it concludes you genuinely cannot pay the full balance within the collection window. The agency looks hard at your income, your allowable living expenses, and your assets, and that last piece is where home equity comes back into the story. If you're sitting on substantial equity, the IRS generally expects you to use it before it forgives anything, which is one more reason the equity-rich conditions of this cycle push many homeowners toward simply selling and paying the debt rather than chasing a settlement that may not be approved. None of this is a reason to avoid an offer in compromise if your finances truly support one. It is a reason to treat it as a possibility to evaluate honestly, ideally with a tax professional, rather than a guaranteed escape hatch.
If there is one shift in thinking I want you to take from this guide, it is this. For most sellers in this market, the lien is not the obstacle. The calendar is. With strong equity behind you, the money to clear a lien is usually there. What sinks deals is starting too late, leaving the IRS no time to process a discharge, or letting a county tax-sale deadline arrive before you have acted. So the entire game is sequencing.
Here is the order that keeps a tax-lien sale on track. Get a title search done early so every recorded claim is on the table before you have a buyer waiting. Pull your current, written payoff figures for both the mortgage and the lien, since stale numbers cause closing-day surprises. If a federal discharge is needed, file the application as soon as you've a signed contract and an appraisal, and remember the IRS asks for it at least 45 days ahead. Tell your title or settlement company about the lien at the very beginning so they can coordinate directly with the taxing authority. And if the lien is large or the situation is tangled, bring in a tax professional before, not after, problems surface.
The reason I push so hard on sequencing is that the alternative is genuinely costly. A single error on a discharge application can trigger a rejection, and a rejection can send a nervous buyer walking. A property tax foreclosure that you did not get ahead of can take the decision out of your hands entirely. None of that is because selling with a lien is impossible. It is because the process has deadlines, and deadlines do not negotiate. The same discipline that gets any loan to the closing table on time applies here: the homeowners who come out clean are the ones who get every question answered upfront and never let a document sit waiting on a follow-up that never comes.
This is also where having the financing side of your next move organized early pays off. If you're selling a home with a lien and buying another, lining up your next loan in parallel keeps you from being stranded between transactions. A verified preapproval gives you a confident read on what you qualify for before you're deep into the sale, and in a competitive market AmeriSave's Certified Approval verifies your income and credit so sellers see a serious, backed buyer rather than a question mark. Getting that squared away early removes one more variable from an already moving timeline.
It also helps to see the sale from the other side of the table, because that is what really drives the urgency. Your buyer is almost certainly getting a mortgage of their own, and their lender will not fund a loan unless that lender ends up in first position on a clean title. A recorded tax lien clouds the title, and a title company will not insure a clean transfer until the lien is cleared or a discharge is in hand. So the lien is not just your problem; it is a gate your buyer's financing has to pass through. This is the practical reason that waiting out a federal lien is so rarely workable when there is an active buyer: a lien left in place can scare off a buyer who is told the property cannot deliver clear title on the timeline they need. Buyers are generally not on the hook for your unpaid taxes after they purchase, but they also do not want a government with a claim that could threaten the property later, and that uncertainty alone is enough to make a nervous buyer walk.
The fix is the same discipline I keep coming back to. Tell your title or settlement company about the lien at the very first opportunity, not when the closing package is being assembled. A good title officer will coordinate directly with the IRS or the county, line up the discharge paperwork, and structure the closing statement so every claim is paid in the right order. When that coordination starts early, a tax-lien sale closes on a normal timeline and the buyer never feels a thing. When it starts late, the lien becomes the reason a deal falls apart at the last minute, which is heartbreaking and almost always avoidable. The lien did not kill the deal. The delay did.
Selling to resolve a lien is not the end of your homeownership story, and it should not feel like it. A couple of forward-looking points are worth getting right.
First, your credit. The major credit bureaus stopped including tax liens on consumer credit reports several years ago, so a tax lien by itself does not drag down your three-digit credit score the way it once did. That said, homeowners who fell behind on taxes are often dealing with broader financial strain, and missed credit card or loan payments from that same period do show up and do affect your score. The encouraging part is that less-than-perfect credit does not close the door on a future mortgage. There are loan programs built for borrowers rebuilding after a rough stretch, including options designed around affordability and credit flexibility, and community lending programs aimed at putting homeownership back within reach. When you're ready to buy again, that conversation is one AmeriSave has every day, and the right product depends on your specific credit, income, and down payment rather than on a generic rule.
Second, a genuinely important and recent development that protects your equity. A unanimous Supreme Court decision established that when a government forecloses on a home for unpaid property taxes and sells it for more than the tax debt, keeping that surplus is an unconstitutional taking. In plain terms, the government can collect what you owe, but it cannot pocket the extra. If a county sells a home over a modest tax bill and the sale brings in far more than the debt, the difference belongs to the former owner. Before that ruling, more than a dozen states had laws that let governments keep the whole amount, a practice critics called home equity theft. This matters most in a worst-case foreclosure scenario, but it is exactly the protection a homeowner under pressure should know exists, because your equity is your property and the law now says so clearly.
Put those two points together and the picture is hopeful rather than grim. A tax lien is a problem to solve, not a verdict on your future. Selling can be the move that gets your finances back under control and puts you into a home that fits your situation today. Most of the homeowners I talk to in this spot are surprised by how workable it turns out to be once they stop treating the lien as a wall and start treating it as a sequence of steps with deadlines attached. And once the immediate debt is behind you, the habits that prevent a repeat are simple ones: keep an eye on your escrow analysis each year so a rising tax bill does not catch you off guard, set a reminder for any tax bill you pay directly rather than through a servicer, and revisit who pays the county the moment a loan is paid off. A lien is almost always the end of a slow drift, not a single bad day, and the same attention that resolves one keeps the next one from ever forming.
You can absolutely sell a house with a tax lien, and selling is frequently the smartest way to clear the debt and move forward. The real work is not getting permission to sell; it is identifying which lien you have, learning where it stands relative to your mortgage, running the numbers on whether your sale covers it, and respecting the deadlines that come with each path. A property tax lien puts a county foreclosure clock on you and usually outranks your mortgage. A federal lien gives you the IRS discharge process and more room to maneuver. In a market where the average mortgaged homeowner holds around $295,000 in equity, most sellers have what they need to make this work, provided they start early and keep the process moving. The practical first moves are the same for almost everyone: get a title search so you know exactly what is recorded, pull written payoff figures on both the mortgage and the lien, and decide whether selling or refinancing fits your situation. If you're weighing a sale with a lien on the title, or planning the purchase that comes after it, AmeriSave's team can help you run those numbers and line up the financing, so the whole move stays on track. Every situation is different, and the right plan starts with your actual figures, not someone else's.
Yes. A tax lien does not stop you from listing or selling your home, and selling is one of the most common ways homeowners pay off the debt. When a government attaches a lien, it is securing its right to be paid if the property sells, not seizing the home. If your sale produces enough to cover your mortgage and the tax debt, the lien is typically paid at closing out of the proceeds and the title clears for your buyer. When the proceeds will not cover a federal tax debt, the IRS offers a discharge process that removes its lien from the specific property, so the sale can still close. The practical issue is rarely whether you can sell. It is which lien you have and how much time the process needs, so starting early is what keeps everything on schedule.
It comes down to priority and which clock you're watching. A property tax lien from your city or county is usually a super lien that outranks your mortgage, so a county can foreclose for unpaid taxes even if your mortgage is current, and the unpaid taxes get paid before your lender at any sale. A federal income tax lien from the IRS generally falls in line behind a mortgage recorded before it, which is why the IRS built a discharge process to step aside for a sale. With a property tax lien, your deadline is the county's foreclosure and redemption timeline. With a federal lien, your timeline is mostly IRS processing. Same word, two different countdowns, and the strategy follows whichever clock is actually running.
If your sale will not cover the full federal tax debt, you ask the IRS to discharge its lien from that specific property. You file the Application for Certificate of Discharge of Property From Federal Tax Lien, and Publication 783 explains how to prepare it. The IRS asks for the application at least 45 days before closing, so do not wait until the final week. Plan to provide a signed sales contract, a professional appraisal showing fair market value, and a draft closing statement showing where the proceeds go. A discharge removes the lien from the home so the sale closes, though you still owe any remaining tax. If you're refinancing rather than selling, the tool is a subordination instead, which moves the lien behind your new lender rather than removing it.
No. The IRS collects in lien-priority order, and only up to what you owe. Liens are paid from the proceeds in their proper order, so if a senior mortgage and a senior property tax lien come first, the IRS receives what is left up to its claim, and any remaining money is yours. The IRS also allows a request for a relocation expense allowance when you're selling and moving, which can let you keep a limited amount of the proceeds for moving costs. And in a foreclosure scenario, a recent unanimous Supreme Court decision confirmed that a government cannot keep surplus sale proceeds beyond the tax debt; that extra equity belongs to you. The government can take what it is owed, but no more than that.
A tax lien on its own no longer appears on consumer credit reports, since the major credit bureaus stopped including them several years ago, so it does not directly lower your three-digit credit score. What can affect your score are the missed payments that sometimes accompany the same financial strain that led to unpaid taxes. The good news is that imperfect credit does not disqualify you from a future mortgage. There are loan programs built for borrowers rebuilding their finances, including options focused on affordability and credit flexibility. The right fit depends on your specific credit, income, and down payment. When you're ready to buy again after resolving a lien, that is a conversation worth having with a lender who can match a program to your actual situation rather than a generic profile.
That depends entirely on your situation, and it is worth thinking through rather than defaulting to either answer. If you have strong equity and want to stay, paying the lien from savings, a payment plan, or a refinance using an IRS subordination may let you keep the home. If the monthly picture is not sustainable or the home no longer fits your finances, selling can clear the debt and reset you into something more affordable. The deciding factors are how much equity you hold, the size and type of the tax debt, and whether staying is realistic month to month. A loan that was right for a neighbor with different income or equity could be exactly wrong for you. Looking honestly at your own numbers, ideally with a lender and a tax professional, beats copying someone else's plan.
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