I decided it’s time I face my demons.

I started my own business at a very young age and was successful for many years. Overtime I became financially irresponsible and got myself in a bad situation with my finances and taxes. I owed a lot of money. I had to hire attorney, sell my house and came up with an agreement to pay monthly towards my debt. Unfortunately business slowed down and I eventually went out of business. I lost everything so I stopped making payments. This was about 16-17 years ago. Since then I fell into deep depression, lost my marriage, lost everything I had worked for. During this time I never heard from IRS (they were most certainly mailing me things that I just didn’t get.) so out of sight out of mind. I lost everything and had no income so I just ignored it all. Between living off of my ex wife(wife at the time) my best friend, my mom, and my ex mother in law I survived somehow. I never filed during this time bc I had no income. Again no sign of IRS at all

Last year I started to come out of my fog and eventually was able to get a good job and I’ve been working for a year now and paying my W2 taxes. I’m ready to face my demons and get right. I opened an irs online account and did not see anything about that past debt. My transcripts show no income and no returns filed since 2015(that’s as far back as it goes) In the back of my mind I’ve been terrified of getting notified by my employer about this debt. That hasn’t happened yet but.. I filed my 2024 taxes and was due a refund. I debated filling bc I didn’t want to trigger anything and prayed that maybe this all has went away. But I decided I cannot keep running away from this. I filed and was due a refund. My thinking was if it approves and they send me the refund then I’m in the clear. I noticed today it said that my refund has been delayed due to an unpaid tax debt.
Again nothing online shows anything about this debt. But obviously it’s still an active debt. I guess I am just looking for some insight and advice. Should this old tax debt and agreement show online? What typically happens in this situation? I apologize if this is all over the place and I appreciate anyone’s thoughts. Thank you.