State garnishments take a slice. The IRS works backwards: a table sets the amount you keep based on filing status and dependents, and everything above it goes to the government. For a single taxpayer that exempt amount can be a few hundred dollars a week. Your employer must comply, it continues every payday, and it does not stop on its own.
How You Got Here
A wage levy is the end of a paper trail: balance-due notices, escalating demands, then a Final Notice of Intent to Levy with 30 days to respond. Somewhere that trail broke - an old address, unopened mail, a year of looking away. The trail matters now because defects in it are defenses: a levy without proper final notice can be challenged, and a timely collection due process request after the final notice would have paused everything. Whether those rights were honored is among the first things worth checking.
The Release Sequence
Releases happen for the same core reasons across the collection system: hardship, resolution, or procedure. Hardship is the urgent lane - a garnishment that leaves you unable to cover basic living expenses must be released, and a documented financial snapshot gets that decision made fast. Resolution is the durable lane: an installment agreement or hardship status replaces the levy with something the IRS accepts. Procedure is the lane people miss: defective notice, a levy during a pending offer or hearing, or exempt income taken.
Two practical notes. First, filing compliance is the toll booth - the IRS resists releasing levies for non-filers, so missing returns get built immediately from IRS wage and income transcripts. Second, the release goes straight to your payroll department by fax, and timing it against your pay cycle is part of doing it right.
Do Not Ride It Out
Letting the levy run rarely ends it. Penalties and interest accrue faster than the exempt-amount math pays the debt down, so the garnishment can grind for years while the balance barely moves. Meanwhile the hardship it creates is often exactly what qualifies you for status that stops it. One call starts the release. Make it before the next payday, not after.