Thousands of clothing items have been claimed by the Internal Revenue Service from an Alabama business that failed to pay its taxes.
Details on the debtor have not been released, but the auction inventory includes thousands of brand-new clothing items including shirts, paints, glove liners and scrubs, all of which are made from a moisture-wicking polypropylene yarn.
The seized items will be sold in an auction at Uncle Bob’s Self Storage in Opelika, Alabama on Thursday, July 25.
The items are open for viewing by the public in advance, with viewings scheduled in a two hour block on Wednesday afternoon and again Thursday morning before the auction begins.
Under sections 7301 through 7304 of the Internal Revenue code, certain items are subject to forfeiture in the event of unpaid taxes. The items seized must be owned by the taxpayer, and they generally have a substantial amount of equity as the IRS can only make a lien sale against that equity.
In other words, the IRS will not go after a home or vehicle with an unpaid lien if there is paid-off property that can be seized instead. All the same, it’s interesting to note that the tax debt in this case is being paid off through an auction rather than a bank account seizure or some other method of settlement.
What makes this auction particularly newsworthy is not just the size and nature of the inventory, but the fact that it’s occurring in the first place – and will be staged at a self-storage unit.
This is an ultimate sign that self-storage auctions have become mainstream, and that self-storage facilities have practically become synonymous with lien auctions in general. In times past, the auction may have occurred in another location or the items may have been sold off in a different manner.
Today, it’s widely understood that the best and simplest way to sell items to the public is through the storage auction format – something that never would have happened before the Storage War craze brought these sales into the public consciousness.
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