It has been the case that travel outside the country could be restricted for people who owe back taxes for at least the last 40 years. Decades ago, the process required an Officer to certify the debt at the place you were expected to leave the country. The various authorities would then, supposedly, spread your name around to all points of entry so that you would be confined to the U.S.The IRS has notified more than 400,000 taxpayers that their passports are at risk since the program began.
In practice, if an Officer certified you as ineligible to travel at a Houston airport, you just flew to Miami and left from there. The system was full of holes and your "ineligible to leave the U.S." status never got communicated outside the office where it was established. The system was totally broken.
If the system has been automated and hooked into the State Dept so that passports are revoked, that would be efficient and reasonable.
In practice and based on your description, though, I suspect that actual revocation will be rare. The IRS is nowhere near as aggressive about collecting taxes as it once was. They are light years away from where they used to be.