IRS Notice · CP523 · Intent to Terminate & Levy

CP523: the IRS is ending your payment plan — what that actually starts

A CP523 is headed “Notice of intent to levy” and prints 30 days, and most people read it as a countdown to a seizure. The date is doing two jobs at once, and neither is the one people assume.

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A CP523 is headed “Notice of intent to levy” and prints 30 days, and most people read it as a countdown to a seizure. The date is doing two jobs at once, and neither is the one people assume. Here is what each measures, what the IRS’s own manual says about levying in that window, and how a plan that has defaulted but not yet terminated gets put back.

You set this up. That is worth saying first, because the letter is written as though you hadn’t. A CP523 goes to someone who came to an arrangement with the IRS and kept it going until something broke it — and the thing that breaks agreements is not always, or even usually, the monthly payment.

The 30 days is doing double duty, and the half people miss is the useful one. It is the notice period the law requires before the IRS may end the agreement — Internal Revenue Code section 6159(b)(5) — and it is also the thirty days a notice of intent to levy carries under section 6331(d). Your notice says so in terms. What it is not is a date on which anything is taken. Your plan is not over yet, and the difference between defaulted and terminated is the most valuable distinction on this page.

And your home is at the far end of this, not the near end. The notice lists what can be reached, and it includes “Personal assets (including your car and home).” A principal residence cannot be levied unless a judge or magistrate of a United States district court approves it in writing. That is the fear most people are actually carrying when they open this envelope, and it is the furthest thing on that list from happening.

And there is more room in this than the envelope suggests. The IRS’s own instruction to its collection staff is that no levy issues on the periods that were in your agreement for 90 days after this notice is mailed. That number is not a favor — it is the law’s protection written out as a procedure, and we set out below what it contains and where it comes from.

If you would rather not work out which of those you are on your own: (800) 236-3741. The line is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After hours you reach our AI receptionist rather than a recording — it answers the common questions, takes your details, and books you the first available thirty minutes. The first call is free. No obligation, no conditions, no strings. Book a time →

Here is what the thirty minutes is for, and it is one job rather than four. Your account transcript is free and you can pull it yourself — we will tell you how before the call — and on the call we read it with you and find the entry that says whether a Final Notice has ever gone out on these periods. That single entry decides what the IRS can reach without writing to you again. It is the one thing on this page you genuinely cannot work out from the letter, and it sits among a hundred lines that look exactly like it. You will also come away knowing whether the agreement has defaulted or already terminated, and which of the two appeal windows you are inside.

Every case here is reviewed and worked by Katherine personally. Not a processing department, and not a case manager relaying messages from someone you never meet.

Key takeaways

•A CP523 carries two heading lines — "Notice of intent to levy" and "Intent to terminate your installment agreement." The 30 days serves both: it is the notice period before the agreement can be ended, and the statutory thirty days a levy notice carries under section 6331(d).
•The 30 days is a statutory notice period, not a deadline that forfeits a right. Section 6159(b)(5) bars the IRS from terminating without giving you notice at least 30 days beforehand, with an explanation of why — unless it believes collection is in jeopardy, in which case neither requirement applies.
•A defaulted agreement is not a terminated one. The IRS's manual says that agreements in default but not yet terminated must be reinstated if the taxpayer remedies the default, unless there is another reason for default. That is the strongest sentence available to you and it expires when the agreement terminates.
•You have one appeal, and you choose when to spend it. A Collection Appeals Program request on Form 9423 is available within 30 days of the proposed termination, or within 30 days of the actual termination — but not both. A further 15 days is allowed each time for mailing.
•This notice does not by itself give you a Collection Due Process hearing. It names no Form 12153. What it can reach without one is narrower than a full levy and wider than nothing — set out below.

What a CP523 is

A CP523 is the notice the IRS sends to tell you it intends to end your installment agreement, and that it intends to levy. The notice states it in one sentence: “Pay the past due amount or we will terminate your installment agreement under Internal Revenue Code Section 6159(b) and after you exhaust your appeal rights, the full amount you owe will be due.”

Two headings run across the top of page one — “Notice of intent to levy” and “Intent to terminate your installment agreement.” Page three says which is which: “This notice is your Notice of Intent to Levy (Internal Revenue Code Section 6331(d)).”

So the 30 days is both the period before the agreement can be ended and the statutory thirty days a levy notice carries. One date, two clocks. What neither clock is, is a seizure date — a notice of intent to levy is a precondition to levying, not a levy — and the rules that decide what can actually be taken, and when, run on separately from this letter’s date.

It is not a bill and it is not an audit. It is a statutory step: the law does not let the IRS end an agreement without telling you first, and this is that telling.

One version of this letter is not this page. If your notice is a CP523H, it concerns a shared responsibility payment under the Affordable Care Act, it carries no “Notice of intent to levy” heading at all, and the IRS’s own manual instructs that no levies may be issued on those liabilities. Different letter, different answer. If it is a CP523B, it went to a business — the identifying number on it is an Employer ID number — and the list of what the IRS can reach without a further letter is shorter than the one below.

Your clock

The 30 days printed on your CP523 is the minimum time the law gives you before the IRS may terminate the agreement, and nothing on this notice expires on that date. The notice says: “If you don’t make the required payments (the past due amount), we will terminate your installment agreement 30 days from the date of this notice.”

That period comes from section 6159(b)(5), and it is worth reading what it requires of the IRS rather than of you:

“The Secretary may not take any action under paragraph (2), (3), or (4) unless — (A) a notice of such action is provided to the taxpayer not later than the day 30 days before the date of such action, and (B) such notice includes an explanation why the Secretary intends to take such action.”

Both halves are obligations on the IRS. The letter has to arrive 30 days ahead, and it has to say why. Your CP523 states a reason. Reading it is the first thing worth doing tonight, because the reason given is what you would be answering — and it is not always the reason you would have guessed.

One carve-out, and it removes both halves at once. The same subsection continues: “The preceding sentence shall not apply in any case in which the Secretary believes that collection of any tax to which an agreement under this section relates is in jeopardy.” Jeopardy is a narrow and deliberate finding, not a mood. But the exception reaches the explanation as well as the 30 days, so neither is a guarantee in every case.

Sources: 26 U.S.C. 6159(b), read 21 September 2026. IRS Notice CP523I specimen, read 21 September 2026.

What triggered it

An installment agreement defaults for one of exactly five reasons, and the one people expect is only the first of them. Section 6159(b)(4) covers the ground in a single heading — “Failure to pay an installment or any other tax liability when due or to provide requested financial information” — and the IRS’s manual turns it into a closed list at IRM 5.14.11.3, which it ends by saying agreements “may not be defaulted nor terminated for reasons other than those listed in this section.”

Read that middle limb again. “Any other tax liability when due.” A plan on 2022 breaks when 2025 comes due and is not paid — not because a monthly payment was missed, but because a new year landed on an account that had an agreement attached to it. Kentucky writes the same ground into its own statute in terms. It is also why the number in the “past due amount” box sometimes has nothing to do with your monthly figure — and comparing that box against your monthly payment is the fastest way to tell which kind of default you are looking at.

The statute’s grammar matters here too, and it runs your way:

Ground	What the statute permits
Information given before the agreement was entered into was inaccurate or incomplete — 6159(b)(2)	Terminate
Collection is in jeopardy — 6159(b)(2)	Terminate
Your financial condition has significantly changed — 6159(b)(3)	Alter, modify, or terminate
Missed installment, another liability unpaid, or requested financial update not provided — 6159(b)(4)	Alter, modify, or terminate

Two of those four permit the IRS to change the agreement rather than end it, and they are the two that cover almost every real default. Nothing in the statute obliges the IRS to terminate. That is not a technicality — it is the whole basis for asking for a modified plan instead of a reinstated one, which is often the better ask when the reason the plan broke was that the payment had become unaffordable.

Note also that (b)(2)’s inaccuracy limb is time-bound: it reaches what was said before the agreement was made, not a change since. A change since is (b)(3), and (b)(3) is the milder paragraph.

What happens if you do nothing

The agreement terminates, the full balance is billed, and the account moves toward collection — but not on the schedule the letter implies. Here is the part almost nobody publishes.

No levy may be made while an installment agreement is in effect, and for 30 days after the IRS terminates one, and for as long as an appeal filed inside those 30 days is pending. That is Internal Revenue Code section 6331(k)(2)(C) and (D), and it is law rather than practice.

The IRS turns that into an instruction for its own collection staff, in Internal Revenue Manual 5.14.11.4(5):

“No levies may be issued on tax periods included in agreements for 90 days after mailing Notice CP 523 or Letter 2975 (DO).”

And the manual says what that period contains, which is what makes it credible rather than magical. Its words are that “this 90 day period includes the following timeframes” — the thirty days after the CP523 is mailed proposing termination, with a note allowing “an additional 15 days beyond this timeframe for taxpayers to mail appeals of defaulted agreements”; and then “an additional 30 days after the date of the termination of the agreement”, with a further 15 days allowed the same way.

Inside the 90 days	What it is
30 days from the mailing of the CP523	The notice period before termination — the number on your letter
Plus 15 days	The manual's mailing allowance for an appeal of a defaulted agreement
30 days from the termination itself	The second appeal window
Plus 15 days	The mailing allowance for that one

Do not add those up. The manual says the 90 days includes them, not that it is their sum, and they overlap — the first mailing allowance is still running once the post-termination window has begun. Where the 90 actually comes from is the IRS’s own systems: the account moves to balance-due status “thirteen (13) weeks (or cycles) after mailing Notice CP 523,” and the manual says plainly that “The 13 cycle period allows for 90 days between the date of the notice and the change to balance due status.”

So the 90 days is not a separate grace period sitting alongside your 30. It is the window that contains your 30, both of your appeal windows, and the time the post takes to move.

Two limits travel with this and both are in the manual’s own words. It covers “tax periods included in agreements” — a balance for a year that was never in your plan is not covered, and that is exactly the reader whose plan broke because a new year came due. And the section it sits in is headed “Defaults and Terminations: IDRS Monitored Agreements”, so it is written for that population.

One more thing that is not a limit but is a caution. That paragraph of the manual carries a revision date of 1 January 2015. It has not been withdrawn and we found nothing superseding it, but it is eleven years old, and we would rather tell you its age than let you find out.

None of which is a reason to wait. It is a reason to stop reading the calendar as though day 31 were a cliff, and to use the room for the two things below.

What to do, and the order it goes in

Step one takes about ten minutes and you can do it tonight: read the reason the IRS gave, because the statute requires it to give one. Your CP523 states why it intends to terminate. Everything else on this page branches off that sentence, and people routinely answer the wrong default — paying a missed installment when the problem was an unfiled year, or scrambling over a new balance when the problem was a returned direct debit.

Then, in order:

Work out whether the agreement has defaulted or already terminated. These are different legal positions with different remedies and the letter alone does not always tell you which you are in. It is the single most consequential fact about your situation and it is on the account transcript.
If it has defaulted and not yet terminated, remedy the default inside the 30 days. The IRS's manual, at 5.14.11.5(3): "If agreements are in default (not yet terminated) they must be reinstated if taxpayers remedy the default (unless there is another reason for default)." "Must" is the manual's word. "Another reason for default" means one of the other four items on a five-item list, not an open category.
Decide whether to spend the appeal now or later, because you only get one.
If the plan broke because it was unaffordable rather than forgotten, ask for a different plan rather than the same one. Section 6159(b)(4) permits the IRS to alter or modify as well as terminate, and a reinstated agreement you cannot pay defaults again in four months.
If there is an unfiled year behind this, it comes first. Filing compliance sits underneath every agreement, and a plan reinstated while a return is outstanding is a plan waiting to break.

Everything above is doable from the kitchen table except step 1, and step 1 is hard for a reason people do not expect. Pulling a transcript is the easy half — the IRS has made that nearly self-service. Reading one is the other half: the status of an agreement shows as a transaction code and a status number rather than as a sentence, and the entry that says whether a Final Notice ever went out on these periods sits among a hundred lines that look exactly like it. That single entry decides whether the levy this notice threatens needs another letter first or does not. It is the thing we look for before anything else, and it is the thing that is genuinely difficult to find if you have not done it before.

You do not have to do that part alone. Pull the transcript before the call — it is free and it is self-service, and we will tell you which one and how — and the reading happens on the thirty minutes, with someone on the other end who has done it before. Call (800) 236-3741 to get the time in the diary.

Reinstating a Defaulted Payment Plan

The sheet that lays out the two positions side by side — defaulted and terminated — with what each one allows, which appeal window goes with which, what the IRS’s manual says must happen when a default is remedied, and the two routes to reinstatement without a financial statement.

It is most useful in the next three weeks, because most of what is on it stops being available once the agreement terminates.

We ask for a first name and an email address, and it is a mailing list. Calling it anything else would be the first dishonest sentence on this page. You will hear from this office now and then, and one click stops it.

[ Get the reinstatement sheet ]

Or go straight to the thirty minutes. (800) 236-3741 puts you on the calendar at any hour, and the transcript gets read on the call rather than down the phone line. None of that costs anything and none of it makes you a client.

Katherine M. Johnson, CPA, CTRS

Katherine M. Johnson is a licensed CPA with over 30 years of experience and a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist (CTRS). She personally handles every case — representing individuals and businesses before the IRS and state revenue departments nationwide.

Read full bio

Situations where this page’s answer changes

The account above is the common one. These come up often enough to check against your own, and three of them are better news than the letter reads like.

Your appeal is one appeal, and using it early spends it. The manual, at 5.14.11.7(2): “the taxpayer has 30 days from the date of proposed termination (default) of the installment agreement (Letter 2975(DO)/CP 523) to submit Form 9423 ... Once the agreement is terminated, the taxpayer has an additional 30 days to submit Form 9423 ... If a CAP hearing is requested prior to termination, the taxpayer may not appeal the decision again once the termination takes effect. Also, 15 days is allowed for each Form 9423 submission for mailing time.”

So these are alternatives, not two bites. Appealing now defends an agreement that still exists, which is the stronger position — and it is the one you spend. Appealing after termination asks for one back.

If you are reading this after day 30 and have not appealed, you have probably not missed it — which is not what the letter suggests and not what most of the internet says. But the second window is a window, not an open door. The manual gives 30 days from the termination, and it also records that the termination date is 30 days from the date of the CP523. Counting from the date on your letter, that puts the second window at roughly days 30 to 60, with the 15-day mailing allowance behind it. Past that, this stops being a question about appeals and becomes a question about asking for a new agreement.

A Collection Appeals Program request is not a Collection Due Process hearing, and the difference costs something. CAP is quicker and broader in what Appeals will look at. It carries no route to the Tax Court and it does not suspend the ten-year collection period. It is what is available here; it is not a substitute for a CDP request where a CDP right exists.

Whether a Final Notice has already gone out on these periods changes what the IRS can do without writing to you again. Your CP523 draws the distinction itself, in two consecutive sentences, and the second one is the one that gets left off:

“After we terminate your installment agreement and you’ve exhausted your appeal rights, we can levy (seize) property or rights to property if we have previously sent you a Collection Due Process (CDP) notice offering you a hearing with the IRS Office of Appeals. If we haven’t sent you a CDP notice, we’re permitted to levy (seize) your state income tax refund and serve a Disqualified Employment Tax Levy or a Federal Contractor Levy, as explained in the enclosed Publication 594, IRS Collection Process.”

Read both branches, because neither one is “you are safe.” If a Final Notice — an LT11, a Letter 1058, a CP90 or a CP297 — already went out on this period and you did not answer it, the hearing right is spent and there may be no further letter before a levy on wages or a bank account. If one never went out, you are not protected either: three things remain available with no CDP notice at all. What is true, and it is narrower than the reassurance you will read elsewhere: for wages and bank accounts, in most situations, a Final Notice conferring hearing rights comes first. For a state income tax refund, a disqualified employment tax levy and a federal contractor levy, it does not. Which of those applies to you is on the transcript and not on the letter.

There are two routes to reinstatement without a financial statement, and the second one catches the default people assume is fatal. The manual, at 5.14.11.5(2), allows reinstatement with no managerial approval and no financial statement analysis where either: “(a) The agreement is in default or was terminated because of an additional liability and if addition of that new liability will result in no more than two additional monthly payments and the agreement will not extend beyond the Collection Statute Expiration Date (CSED). A lien determination is required for these agreements.” Or “(b) The agreement meets streamlined criteria and the taxpayer has not defaulted an installment agreement in the 12 months prior to the current default.”

These are alternatives. The 12-month condition attaches to route (b) only. A second default inside a year does not close route (a) — and route (a) is written for the default caused by a new liability, which is the one the statute’s own “any other tax liability when due” limb describes. In every other case the manual requires financial statement analysis to re-evaluate ability to pay. (What “streamlined criteria” covers is defined in a different part of the manual, which we have not read, so we are not going to tell you whether you meet it.)

Asking for a new agreement, or an offer, bars a levy while the request is pending. Section 6331(k) stops a levy while an installment agreement request or an offer in compromise is pending, for 30 days after either is rejected, and during an appeal of that rejection filed inside those 30 days. Two precisions: for an offer, the protection begins “on the date the Secretary accepts such offer for processing” — not the day you mail it. And it bars levy only; it does not stop a Notice of Federal Tax Lien being filed, and it does not stop interest and penalties accruing. A pending offer also suspends the ten-year collection period, which is the price of the protection and belongs in the decision rather than in the footnotes.

If you cannot pay a plan at all, that is a different question with a formal name. Currently Not Collectible status is requested at the number on the notice or on 800-829-1040, and the IRS may require Form 433-F, Form 433-A or Form 433-B. Four things travel with it and all four are the IRS’s own words: penalties and interest keep accruing, a Notice of Federal Tax Lien may still be filed, a federal tax refund due to you “will” be applied to the debt, and the debt is not forgiven — “You still owe the full amount of your tax debt.”

On the house, since it is on the notice’s list and it is what people actually fear. The protection is section 6334, and it is narrower than “they cannot take it”: a principal residence is exempt from levy unless a judge or magistrate of a United States district court approves the levy in writing, and the district courts have exclusive jurisdiction over that approval. So it is not impossible — it happens — but it requires a court, a hearing and a judge, none of which arrives as a consequence of this letter.

Social Security is on that list and there is a ceiling on it. A continuous levy under section 6331(h) reaches up to 15 percent of Social Security benefits. “Up to” is the statute’s phrase and both IRS sources use it.

If the balance is old, find out how old. The IRS generally has ten years from assessment to collect and each year carries its own clock. On a genuinely old balance the question is not which plan to ask for — it is how much of the period is left, and whether the thing you are about to sign extends it.

The Kentucky note

If you also have a payment agreement with Kentucky, the state gives you a notice right that reads almost exactly like the federal one — and the state’s own online application appears to contradict it.

Kentucky taxpayers have a statutory right to an installment payment agreement under KRS 131.081(9)(a), conditional on requesting it in writing and showing both an inability to pay in full and that the agreement will facilitate collection. KRS 131.081(9)(b) then lists five grounds on which the department may act, and the fifth is the state’s version of the clause that ends most federal agreements: “The taxpayer fails to timely report and pay any other tax due the Commonwealth.”

And KRS 131.081(9)(c) gives the state analogue of section 6159(b)(5):

“The department shall give written notice to the taxpayer at least thirty (30) days prior to modifying or terminating an installment payment agreement unless the department has reason to believe that collection of the amounts owed will be jeopardized in whole or in part by delay.”

Thirty days, written, jeopardy aside — the same architecture as the federal rule, and the same verb order, modify before terminate. Kentucky’s exception is drawn differently in two respects worth noticing: it reaches jeopardy caused by delay, and jeopardy in part is enough.

Set that against the Department of Revenue’s Internet Payment Agreement, which states: “Any new liability will break the agreement and the full balance will become due immediately.” Read alongside (9)(b)5 those fit together rather than colliding — the application is stating the statutory ground, and the statute adds the thirty days’ notice the application’s own wording does not mention.

The term in that application which the statute does not supply is the one to weigh before signing: “By entering into a pay agreement with KYDOR you acknowledge the validity of the tax due and all protest right of KRS 131.110 are extinguished.” Kentucky’s 60-day protest window — counted from the date of the notice rather than the day you opened it, and only preserved in writing — is the state’s route for arguing about the amount, and the online agreement gives it up. If there is any question about whether the state’s number is right, it is worth settling before the agreement rather than after. The same terms publish a maximum term of 24 months and a minimum monthly payment of $50.00 — terms of the online tool, not a statutory cap; the text says longer terms are negotiable with the department — and confirm that “Any state or federal tax refund or state vendor payment will still be offset and applied to the amount due.”

How a Kentucky balance and an IRS balance interact →

Sources: KRS 131.081(9)(a), (9)(b) and (9)(c); Kentucky Department of Revenue Internet Payment Agreement terms. Reviewed 21 September 2026.

What we see

Two questions decide a CP523 and neither of them is the past-due figure. The first is whether the agreement has defaulted or already terminated, because those are two different problems with two different remedies and only one of them carries the word “must.” The second is whether a Final Notice ever went out on these periods, since that entry decides what can happen without another letter — and unlike the first, it cannot be answered from anything the reader is holding. Underneath both sits a question about the default itself: whether a payment was genuinely missed, or whether a new year came due and broke the agreement on a clause nobody reads. The misconception people arrive with is that the CP523 is itself the levy, or that the plan is already gone and they are calling about wreckage. Neither is established by the letter, and the call is about working out which of the two positions they are actually standing in.

One thing worth saying to the person rather than about the letter. A defaulted payment plan is evidence that you made an arrangement and something went wrong inside it. That is a materially different position from never having engaged with the IRS at all, and it is treated differently — by the statute, which lets the IRS modify rather than end; by the manual, which says a remedied default must be reinstated; and by the people who will look at your account.

Where this sits in the sequence

Notice	What it adds
CP521	The monthly reminder. A payment is due by the date printed.
CP522	The IRS wants updated financials, by telephone, to keep the plan going.
CP166	A direct debit did not clear — the business version of the same problem.
▶CP523You are here	Intent to terminate the agreement, and intent to levy. 30 days, and one appeal.
CP504	Notice of intent to levy on a balance outside an agreement. Your state refund becomes reachable.
LT11 / Letter 1058	The Final Notice, carrying the Collection Due Process hearing right — the one with the hard 30-day deadline.

See the full library → · What we do at this stage: IRS collection defense → · If the plan was never affordable: partial pay installment agreements →

Common questions

Is the IRS about to take money out of my account?

Not on the strength of this notice by itself. The agreement has not terminated yet — the 30 days is the notice period before it can — and the IRS's own manual instructs staff that no levy issues on the periods that were in the agreement for 90 days after this notice is mailed. What happens after that depends on whether a Final Notice has ever gone out on these periods, which is on the transcript rather than on the letter.

Can I just pay the past due amount and carry on?

Often, yes, and it is the cleanest thing available. The manual says agreements in default but not yet terminated must be reinstated if the taxpayer remedies the default, unless there is another reason for default. That word "must" is the reason to act inside the 30 days rather than after them — once the agreement terminates, reinstatement becomes a request rather than an entitlement.

I get one of these every month for a different year. Do I have to pay each one?

Not necessarily, and one of the IRS's own printings of this notice says so directly: "You will receive this notice for each tax period that you owe however, the amount due to reinstate your installment agreement must be paid only one time to prevent default." That sentence is on the business printing of the CP523 and not on the individual one, so it may not be on the letter in your hand — but what it describes is a property of the agreement rather than of the letter. Several envelopes, one agreement. Establish the single figure before paying against each notice separately.

Will this put a lien on me?

It can, and the notice does not soften what that means: "If a lien is in place, it may be difficult to sell or borrow against your property. A tax lien will also appear on your credit report – which may harm your credit rating – and your creditors will be publicly notified that the IRS has priority to seize your property." Note that the protections described on this page bar levy — the taking of property — and do not stop a lien being filed, which is a public claim against property you keep.

Does appealing stop the clock?

An appeal filed within the 30 days after termination keeps the levy bar running while it is pending, under section 6331(k)(2)(D). But a Collection Appeals Program request carries no route to the Tax Court and does not suspend the ten-year collection period the way some other routes do. And you get one — used before termination, it cannot be used again after.

What if the reason printed on my notice is wrong?

Then that is the thing to answer, and it is worth answering precisely. The statute requires the notice to include an explanation of why the IRS intends to act. If the stated reason is a payment you made, or a liability that was paid or is not yours, the account transcript is where that shows, and it is a different conversation from asking for a plan back.

If you do not yet know whether your agreement has defaulted or already terminated, that is the question to bring, and it is answered from the transcript rather than from the letter. (800) 236-3741, or book a time →. The first call is free.

Where this is worth a call, and where it plainly isn’t

If your plan defaulted because one payment was missed, you can cover the past-due amount, and every return is filed — pay it and the agreement comes back. You do not need us for that. The IRS’s own manual is on your side, the reinstatement runs without managerial approval on either of the two routes above, and the number to call is printed on your notice.

Where it stops being that, and any one of these is enough:

The plan broke because a new year came due, not because you missed a payment. The right ask is usually a modified agreement rather than the same one back, and the two are requested differently.
You do not know whether you have defaulted or terminated. The remedies diverge completely at that fork and the letter does not always say which side of it you are on.
A Final Notice may have gone out on these periods already. If it did, the hearing right is spent and what can happen next is not what this page's general case describes.
You have already used the appeal, or you are past day 30 and unsure which window you are in.
The plan was never affordable. Paying the past-due amount buys the agreement back at the payment that already failed, and the same envelope arrives in the spring with a bigger balance behind it.
There is a business behind the balance, or an unfiled year behind the plan. Either one changes the sequence, and payroll changes it a great deal.

Not sure which of those you are? That is what the call is for — including when the answer is “none of them, go and pay it.”

The first call is free. Thirty minutes. No obligation, no conditions, no strings. It is a review rather than a pitch: you will leave it knowing what comes next for you, how we would help, and how an engagement would be structured.

Bring two things and the thirty minutes does real work. The notice — the reason printed on it and the past-due box place you straight away — and your account transcript for the years in the agreement, which is free, which you pull yourself, and which we will tell you how to get before the call. The transcript is where the entry lives that says whether a Final Notice has already gone out on these periods, and reading it with you is the job. If you would rather Katherine looked at anything first, send as much or as little as you want to; the call is free either way.

Call (800) 236-3741 — answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so if it is late and you have just opened this you can start tonight. After hours you reach our AI receptionist rather than a recording; it can answer the common questions, take your details and book you the first available thirty minutes. Or Book a time →.

Katherine works the account herself.

Call (800) 236-3741 Book a time

This page explains how IRS notices and the rules behind them generally work. It is not tax or legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create a client relationship. Figures and manual references are current as of the last-reviewed date above and the rules change.

Next Level Tax Resolution is a private CPA firm in Georgetown, Kentucky. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service, the Kentucky Department of Revenue, or any government agency.

The NLTR Office · Reviewed by Katherine M. Johnson, CPA, CTRS