County Tax Lien; Can it be removed?

[slater]

I just pulled a 3 Bureau merged credit report and noticed two Tax Liens filed in Orange County California. They are being reported by Trans Union. One in 2003 and one in 2004 and both are for very small amounts, $156 each. I used to own a business and had a resale permit. I canceled the permit in 2003 but received something in the mail about two years ago stating that I had filed anything since 2003. I called and was told that the cancellation of the account had never been completed (whatever that means, its either canceled or its not, right?). I explained the situation to the woman on the phone and she apologized for the inconvenience and told me she would finalize the cancellation immediately and to ignore whatever I had received in the mail.

These liens did not show up on the report that I pulled 6 months ago.

I am completely new to this and have read a few of the other posts but I'm still confused. If I pay the $156 the liens stay on my record for 7 years, so I am assuming I dispute. Where do I start? What do I do?

[gator944]

Try this. I had a state tax lien on all 3 of my reports. I disputed all three with the bureaus. With this dispute it dropped off of my EX report. I disputed again with EQ and TU. This time TU deleted the entry. I just figured I was stuck with it on my EQ report and that's life.

Recently I was pre-approved for a mortgage, but my broker advised that mortgage companies don't like tax liens and that I'll probably have to pay it before closing.

I figured what could it hurt. I sent a letter to EQ requesting they provide me with their method of verification on my tax lien dispute. I pointed out that both TU and EX deleted it from their files since they couldn't verify, so how could EQ.

The day they signed for my letter the entry was marked "disputed by consumer". Keep in mind, I wasn't disputing it. I simply wanted to know how they verified it.

1.5 weeks later it was gone. This was just a week ago.