IRS Notice · CP71 · Annual Reminder

CP71: the reminder the IRS has to send, and the clock behind it

A CP71 is an annual reminder the IRS says it is required to send, and it keeps arriving until the collection period expires. It is quieter than the letters that came before — and the useful question it raises is about that expiry date, not about the letter.

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You may have seen this one before, around this time of year, and that is by design. The notice says so: "We're required to send you this annual reminder explaining the amount you still owe." It is not a new decision about you and it is not an escalation.

What it is not, though, is nothing. It prints an amount and a date. It says the IRS can file a public lien and can levy. And it contains a sentence people rarely notice: "We'll assume you agree with the information in this notice if we don't hear from you."

The thing worth knowing is behind the letter rather than on it. The notice tells you it will keep coming "until the statute of limitations for collection expires." That period is generally ten years from assessment, every year on your account runs its own, and several ordinary things extend it. Where yours actually stands is knowable, and it is the one question this letter should prompt.

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Key takeaways

•A CP71 is an annual reminder of a balance still owed. The IRS states it is required to send it, and that it will keep sending it "until the statute of limitations for collection expires."
•It prints an amount due and a date. That date is a payment date, not a statutory deadline — nothing on this letter forfeits a right — but the letter is not undated and it is not free of consequences.
•It names four: interest and penalties continuing, future refunds being offset, a Notice of Federal Tax Lien being filed, and levy.
•"We'll assume you agree with the information in this notice if we don't hear from you." If the balance is wrong, silence is not neutral.
•The CP71 letter carries no passport warning. The IRS's website page about it does. If the paper in your hand is a CP71C, that is a different notice with a real consequence — check the code in the top-right corner.
•The question worth answering is the collection statute, generally ten years from assessment, with each year running its own.

What a CP71 is

A CP71 is an annual reminder that a balance remains unpaid, which the IRS states it is required to send. From the notice: "We're required to send you this annual reminder explaining the amount you still owe for your [year] Form 1040 taxes." The IRS's own page opens: "We sent you this notice because you still have an unpaid balance on one of your tax accounts and it requires your immediate attention."

What makes it different from the rest of this family is that it is not a step in the escalation. The CP14, CP501 and CP503 form a sequence in which each letter adds something. A CP71 restates, on a yearly cycle, and it says how long it will keep doing so: "If you don't pay the amount due or call us to make payment arrangements, we will continue to send you annual reminder notices of your balance due until the statute of limitations for collection expires."

That sentence is the most useful thing on the notice, and it points at the question the rest of this page is about.

The notice also carries the standing lien and levy language, in full:

"When you do not pay your tax debt, a federal tax lien arises as a claim against all your property. If you don't pay the amount due immediately or make payment arrangements, we can file a Notice of Federal Tax Lien (NFTL) publicly establishing our priority with your creditors and we may levy (subject to any applicable Collection Due Process rights)."

Two things about that sentence. The lien arising is automatic and invisible and has already happened; the Notice of Federal Tax Lien is the public filing, which is a separate event and is what affects credit. And "we may levy" is subject to Collection Due Process rights — before the IRS can levy wages or a bank account it must first send a Final Notice of Intent to Levy, which is a different letter carrying a hard thirty-day window.

Your clock

Two different periods, and only one of them is on the letter.

The date printed on your notice is a payment date. It is real — interest and penalties keep running past it — and it is not a statutory deadline. Nothing about this letter forfeits a right if you miss it.

The period that matters is the collection statute. The IRS generally has ten years from the date a tax was assessed to collect it. Each tax year on your account carries its own, so an account with four years on it has four separate dates.

"Generally" is doing real work. The IRS lists what suspends or extends the period: a pending installment agreement request, a pending offer in compromise, a request for a Collection Due Process hearing, an innocent spouse claim, bankruptcy, combat zone and military service, and continuous residence outside the United States for six months or more.

Three of those are things a taxpayer chooses to do. Requesting a hearing, applying for an offer, or asking for an agreement all lengthen the period the IRS has to collect. That is not a reason to avoid any of them — it is a trade. Anyone who recommends one of those routes to you without mentioning that it extends the clock, including us, is giving you half a picture.

Sources: IRS Notice CP71 specimen, irs.gov, read 6 September 2026. IRS, "Understanding your CP71 notice," reviewed 6 September 2026. IRS, "Time IRS can collect tax," reviewed 25 August 2026.

What triggered it

An unpaid balance that has been on the account long enough to enter the annual cycle. The notice is generated because a balance exists and the collection period has not run out — not because anyone reviewed your circumstances this year.

A common assumption worth correcting, because it changes what people do. People often read the arrival of a quiet annual letter, in place of the louder ones, as evidence that the IRS has stopped pursuing them — that the account must be in hardship status or otherwise parked.

Sometimes that is true and it is not what the notice means. The IRS sends this reminder because it is required to, on any open balance, until the collection period expires. A CP71 tells you a balance exists and a clock is running. It does not tell you what status your account is in, and assuming a favorable one from the tone of a letter is how people find out the hard way.

What happens if you do nothing

Another CP71 next year, a larger balance, and four consequences the notice itself names. From the IRS's own list of what happens if you do not respond:

Interest continues to accrue and additional penalties may apply.
Future tax refunds may be offset until the balance is paid. This is the one people are most often surprised by, and it is the mechanism most likely to actually touch them.
A Notice of Federal Tax Lien may be filed, which is the public document that affects credit.
The State Department may revoke, or decline to issue or renew, a passport if you are certified as having seriously delinquent tax debt. (The certification test has three parts and a balance alone does not meet it — see CP71C.)

And one more, which is not on any list because it is a sentence rather than a consequence: "We'll assume you agree with the information in this notice if we don't hear from you." If the balance is right, that costs nothing. If it is wrong, silence is being read as agreement, every year.

What does not happen: nothing is seized on the strength of this letter. Before the IRS levies wages or a bank account it must send a Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing, which carries a hard thirty-day window and the strongest appeal right in the process. A CP71 is not that letter.

What to do

Step one, and it takes about a minute: check the code in the top-right corner of your notice. If it reads CP71C, you are holding a different letter with a passport consequence attached, and that page is where the answer is. If it reads CP71, carry on here.

Then, in order of what is actually worth doing:

1. Find out how much of the collection period is left on each year. This is the question the notice raises and it changes what everything else is worth. A balance with eighteen months left is a different problem from the same balance with eight years left.

2. Confirm what status your account is actually in, rather than inferring one from the quiet. If you were told you are in Currently Not Collectible status, that is checkable. If nobody ever told you and the loud letters simply stopped, that is worth knowing too.

3. If the balance is wrong, say so this year rather than next. The notice treats silence as agreement, and each year of silence makes the correction harder to evidence.

4. If your circumstances have worsened and no status is in place, Currently Not Collectible is requested at the number on the notice or at 800-829-1040, and the IRS may ask for Form 433-F, Form 433-A for wage earners and the self-employed, or Form 433-B for businesses. Three things travel with it and none is optional to understand: penalties and interest keep accruing, a Notice of Federal Tax Lien may still be filed, and the debt is not forgiven — you still owe the full amount.

5. If a refund is due to you on a later year, expect it to be offset. That is on the IRS's own list and it is often how a dormant balance suddenly becomes real.

What is harder than it looks here is step 1, and specifically the suspensions. Collection statute dates are not printed on any notice. They are derived from assessment dates and then adjusted for every event in the account's history that paused the clock — and each pause has to be identified from a transaction code and measured. The dates people arrive with are usually wrong in the same direction: they have counted ten years from the year of the tax, rather than from assessment, and have not counted the suspensions at all.

Two things worth reading next, depending on where this goes. Currently Not Collectible status explains what it is and what it does not do — including the three things that keep running while it is in place. Hardship status explained covers how the financial picture is assessed.

The IRS Notice Timeline

Where the quiet letters sit relative to the loud ones. A CP71 is off the escalation ladder, and the sheet shows what that means — which letters would have to arrive before anything could be taken, and which of them carry deadlines that forfeit something. Useful mostly for working out whether the envelopes you have already got included one of those.

A first name and an email address — a mailing list, plainly. The figures on the sheet move and this is how corrections reach you.

[ Get the timeline ]

Or, if it is quicker: call (800) 236-3741 and read us the notice codes you are holding. We will tell you which of them matter and which are reminders. That part does not cost anything and does not require you to be a client.

The Kentucky note

Kentucky's collection period is not the IRS's, and a quiet federal account tells you nothing about a state one. The two run independently — different assessment dates, different suspension rules, different limitation periods — so a Kentucky liability can be actively collected while the federal one sits still.

Kentucky also has no direct analogue to Currently Not Collectible in the federal sense, which makes "the IRS has stopped and the state has not" a common and confusing position. Kentucky vs IRS collections sets out how the two behave differently on the same debt.

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

Where this sits

Notice	What it is
CP14 → CP501 → CP503	The escalating sequence. Each adds something.
CP71▶ You are here	Off the ladder. A required annual reminder that runs until the collection period expires.
CP71C	The same annual reminder, with the passport warning. Different consequence.
CP504 → LT11	Where the ladder goes if active collection restarts.

The escalating sequence: CP14 → CP501 → CP503 →Where the ladder goes if collection restarts: CP504 → LT11 →See the full library →

Common questions

Does a CP71 mean the IRS is about to do something?

It is not an escalation and it names no next step with a date. It is a reminder the IRS says it is required to send, on any open balance, until the collection period expires. What it does not do is tell you what status your account is in — that is a separate question with a checkable answer.

My notice mentions my passport. Is that a CP71?

Check the code rather than the content. The published CP71 letter contains no passport language at all; the CP71C carries the full FAST Act paragraph. The IRS's website page about the CP71 does mention passports, which is where the confusion comes from. The code in the top-right corner settles it, and the CP71C page covers that version.

Does the balance eventually expire?

The IRS generally has ten years from assessment to collect, and each year has its own date. Several common things suspend or extend it, including some a taxpayer chooses to do, so the arithmetic is rarely the simple one — and counting ten years from the tax year rather than from assessment is the usual error.

Should I do anything about this letter?

About the letter itself, often not much — there is no deadline on it that forfeits a right. About what is behind it, that depends entirely on the collection statute picture and on whether the balance is right, and both are worth establishing once rather than wondering about annually. Note that the notice treats silence as agreement with the amount.

Can penalties be removed on a balance this old?

Sometimes, and the route depends on the year. For older years First Time Abate still exists and still has to be requested. The IRS is separately phasing in an automatic process announced in July 2026, which applies to newer returns and fully replaces First Time Abate for returns with original due dates on or after 1 January 2027 — so for a balance this old the older route is generally the relevant one.

The people who should call someone else first

If the balance is modest and your circumstances are stable, the best call you can make is not to this office — it is to the IRS, at the number on your notice. They will confirm the balance, take a payment, or set up a plan, and there is no version of that conversation we improve. And if money is genuinely tight, the Taxpayer Advocate Service exists for exactly this: an independent organization inside the IRS, with offices in every state including Kentucky, helping taxpayers whose problems are not getting resolved through normal channels — and where you qualify for its help, that help is always free. We send people there, and for a good number of CP71 situations it is straightforwardly the right answer.

Here is where this stops being a phone call and becomes work:

You need the collection statute dates on several years, with the suspensions counted. This is the one thing on this page that is genuinely difficult.
You believe you are in Currently Not Collectible status and have never seen it confirmed.
The balance is wrong, and several years of the notice treating silence as agreement have gone by.
Your income has improved materially and you would rather approach the IRS than be found.
There are unfiled years sitting behind the balance, which changes every option available.

Not sure which of those you are? Those answers live on the account, not on the letter. We will work through it with you, and if the answer is "call the IRS" or "call the Taxpayer Advocate Service," that is what you will hear — first thing, not last.

The first call is free. Thirty minutes. No obligation, no conditions, no strings. It works out how much of the collection period is actually left, and whether the balance is one worth disputing before another year of silence goes by. Pull your account transcript beforehand if you can; the IRS gives them out free online, and if you would rather not, we will tell you how.

Call (800) 236-3741 — the line is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week — or Book a time →.

Katherine works the account herself. You will not be handed to a case manager.

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 are current as of the last-reviewed date above.

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