Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: a lien and a levy are routinely used as if they were the same word. They are opposite ends of the process. A lien is a claim; a levy is a taking. And if your income is Social Security, there is a specific statutory ceiling on what a continuing levy can reach: 15 percent.
The difference, plainly
- A lien is a legal claim against property you own. It secures the government’s interest. Nothing moves; nothing is taken. It affects your ability to sell or borrow against the property.
- A levy is the actual taking — of a bank balance, of wages, of a payment due to you. A lien announces an interest; a levy collects.
The confusion has a practical cost: people receiving a lien notice sometimes empty accounts in a panic, and people receiving a levy notice sometimes assume nothing will actually happen. Both reactions are the wrong way round.
The 15 percent that applies to Social Security
Under 26 U.S.C. §6331(h), a continuous levy “shall attach to up to 15 percent of any specified payment due to the taxpayer” — and specified payments include certain Social Security, veterans’ and railroad benefit payments, as well as annuities and pensions under railroad programmes.
This is the fact most worth knowing in the whole collection wing for a retired household, because the fear is usually that a benefit can be taken outright. Under a continuous levy it is capped at 15 percent of the specified payment.
The statute also carries a sharp exception in the other direction: for vendors supplying goods or services to the federal government, and Medicare providers, 100 percent may be levied rather than 15. If you are retired and also doing contract work for a federal agency, those are two different rules touching the same household.
The wider question of what can and cannot reach a benefit is a different subject with different law — a federal tax levy is one of the narrow exceptions to the general protection.
What has to happen first
A levy is not the beginning of anything. It sits at the end of the ladder, and the step before it is the one that carries your rights: the collection notices in order, and the 30-day hearing right that attaches to the final notice. By the time a levy happens, a statutory opportunity to stop it has usually already come and gone.
Every route named here is the IRS’s own or a free public one. We do not sell tax help, we are not paid if you hire anyone, and we do not name private companies. Anyone who contacts you after a collection notice promising to make the debt disappear is selling something; the rights on this page are free and already yours.
Sources
26 U.S.C. §6331(h) (continuous levy on specified payments) and §6331(d) (notice before levy), read at the Legal Information Institute on 2026-08-07.
Honest gap. This page distinguishes the two instruments and states the statutory ceiling for continuous levies on specified payments. It does not cover lien withdrawal, discharge or subordination, the effect of a lien on credit reporting, exempt amounts for a wage levy, or release procedures — each is its own subject and none was read here.
See methodology and corrections. General information about published law and IRS procedure, not tax advice. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.
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