Here is a comparison the tax relief industry never makes, because it cannot sell the answer: for older income tax debt, a Chapter 7 bankruptcy can erase in four months what an offer in compromise might settle over a year - sometimes at lower total cost, with no five-year compliance probation afterward. The catch is a set of timing rules that have to be read off your IRS transcripts, not guessed at.
The Timing Rules
Income tax is generally dischargeable when three clocks have run: the return was due more than three years before filing bankruptcy, counting extensions; the return was actually filed more than two years before; and the assessment is more than 240 days old. Each rule has events that pause it - prior bankruptcies, pending offers in compromise, certain collection holds - which is why the analysis runs on transcript dates.
Sometimes the answer is 'dischargeable in nine months.' That is not a no. That is a calendar entry, and waiting for a date is a legitimate strategy when the date kills six figures of debt.
What Survives
Trust fund payroll taxes and the trust fund recovery penalty survive bankruptcy, always. Fraud liabilities survive. Recent taxes that flunk the timing tests survive. And a return filed late after the IRS already assessed the year through a substitute for return may never qualify the debt for discharge at all in some circuits - one more reason non-filers should file sooner rather than later.
The lien deserves its own line: discharge ends your personal liability, but a Notice of Federal Tax Lien recorded before the bankruptcy survives against property you owned at filing. Whether the IRS has filed one, and when, belongs in the planning.
The Honest Comparison
Bankruptcy is not the first move, and it touches your whole financial life, not just the tax debt. But on the right facts - old income tax years, modest assets, an offer that would still cost real money - it wins the comparison outright. The analysis costs you nothing: get me your transcripts and I will run the discharge dates against the offer math side by side. Then you choose with the whole board visible.