IRS Notice · CP71C · Passport Warning · Panic

CP71C: what has to be true before your passport is actually at risk

A CP71C is an annual balance reminder that adds a passport warning — and the warning describes a process with three requirements, not one. Here is what all three are, why a large balance on its own does not certify you, and the two things that stop it that you can start this week.

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Your letter states the test. Read it again, because most people stop at the first paragraph. The second one is the definition, and it is the part that matters: seriously delinquent tax debt is debt over a threshold that has also had a Notice of Federal Tax Lien filed with administrative remedies lapsed or exhausted, or has had a levy issued.

A threshold is not a trigger. Owing more than the figure does not certify you to the State Department. Two further things have to be true, and on a great many accounts they are not.

What your letter cannot tell you is which of those three you actually fail — that is on your account, not on the page, and it is the difference between a live problem and a warning about someone else's.

One more thing the letter does not say: the dollar figure printed on it may not be the current one. The threshold is adjusted every January. On an older notice it is out of date.

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Key takeaways

•A CP71C is an annual reminder of an unpaid balance that also carries the passport warning under Internal Revenue Code section 7345, enacted in the FAST Act.
•The threshold for 2026 is more than $66,000 in legally enforceable, unpaid federal tax debt including assessed penalties and interest — adjusted every year for inflation.
•Crossing the threshold is not enough. The debt must also have a filed Notice of Federal Tax Lien with administrative remedies lapsed or exhausted, or a levy issued. Balance alone does not certify.
•Certification is not revocation. The IRS certifies to the State Department; the State Department then generally will not issue or renew a passport. Revocation of a passport you already hold is discretionary and separate.
•There are exactly two statutory exceptions, and the first one covers the route most people can actually use: a debt being paid in a timely manner under an installment agreement. (An accepted offer in compromise is inside the same exception — but an offer that is merely pending is on the IRS's administrative list, not in the statute, and "accepted" is not something you achieve this week.)
•The notice prints an amount due and a date, and says the IRS will assume you agree with it if you do not respond. The date is a payment date rather than a deadline that forfeits a right — but the letter is not undated.
•⚠️ If your letter prints a dollar figure, it may be out of date. The threshold moves every January. Use the current figure, not the one on an older notice.

What a CP71C is

A CP71C is the IRS's annual reminder of an unpaid balance, carrying the passport certification warning. The notice's headline is the same as a CP71's — "Annual reminder of balance due taxes" — and the IRS describes it as arriving because "you still have an unpaid balance on one of your tax accounts and it requires your immediate attention."

Everything on a CP71 is true of this letter too. It is a reminder the IRS says it is required to send, it prints an amount and a date, it names payment, a payment plan, an offer in compromise, lien filing and levy, and it says it will keep arriving "until the statute of limitations for collection expires." It also carries the sentence people miss on both versions: "We'll assume you agree with the information in this notice if we don't hear from you." It is a restatement rather than an escalation — but it is not a letter with nothing on it.

The one paragraph that makes it different is the passport paragraph, and the letter sets out the statutory background in full:

"On December 4, 2015, as part of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, Congress enacted Section 7345 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), which requires the Internal Revenue Service to notify the State Department of taxpayers certified as owing a seriously delinquent tax debt. The FAST Act generally prohibits the State Department from issuing or renewing a passport to a taxpayer with seriously delinquent tax debt."

And then the notice does something better than most IRS letters do: it gives you the definition.

"Seriously delinquent tax debt means an unpaid, legally enforceable federal tax debt of an individual totaling more than [threshold] that has been assessed and for which a Notice of Federal Tax lien has been filed and all administrative remedies under IRC Section 6320 have lapsed or been exhausted, or a levy has been issued."

That single sentence is the whole test, and it is on your letter. What it cannot tell you — because it is a statement of law rather than a statement about your account — is which of its three limbs applies to you. That gap is what the rest of this page is about.

(The dollar figure is redacted above deliberately. It is adjusted every January and older notices print older numbers — see the warning below.)

The three things that must all be true

"Seriously delinquent tax debt" is a defined term, and the definition has three parts. All three are required.

#	The requirement	Is it likely true for you?
1	More than $66,000 for 2026 — legally enforceable, unpaid federal tax debt including assessed penalties and interest. Adjusted every year for inflation.	Check the current figure, not the one printed on an older letter.
2	A Notice of Federal Tax Lien has been filed and administrative remedies under section 6320 have lapsed or been exhausted — or a levy has been issued.	This is the one people miss. A filed lien is a specific event with its own letter.
3	The debt is not covered by an exception.	See below — two of them are ordinary arrangements.

Requirement 2 is where most of the reassurance lives, and it is the limb the definition sentence buries in the middle of a long clause. A large balance with no filed Notice of Federal Tax Lien and no levy issued is not seriously delinquent tax debt, whatever the number. If a Notice of Federal Tax Lien had been filed against you, you would have received a Letter 3172, which carries its own appeal rights and its own thirty-day hearing window.

So the single most useful thing you can establish tonight is whether a lien has actually been filed. That is a fact about your account, not a judgment call, and it is free to check.

⚠️ A note on the figure, because it will catch people. The threshold is adjusted annually and it moves every January. Older CP71C letters — including the published specimen — print earlier figures. A number on a letter from a previous year is not the current threshold and should not be relied on. Take it from the IRS's own current page, or ask.

Sources: IRS, "Revocation or denial of passport in case of certain unpaid taxes," verified 5 September 2026. Internal Revenue Code section 7345(b), verified 5 September 2026. IRS Notice CP71C specimen, read 6 September 2026.

What certification does, and what it does not

Certification is the IRS telling the State Department. It is not the State Department taking anything.

What follows certification, generally: the State Department will not issue a new passport and will not renew an existing one.

What is discretionary and separate: revoking a passport you already hold, or limiting it to return travel. The IRS's language is that the State Department may do this. It is not automatic and it is not the ordinary case.

And if you apply while certified, the State Department generally holds the application open for a period before denying it, to give you time to resolve the debt — which is not on your notice and is worth knowing before you cancel anything.

The practical shape of it: for most people the real exposure is not a passport being taken. It is a renewal quietly failing at the wrong moment.

The ways out

There are two statutory exceptions under section 7345(b)(2), and they are worth stating exactly because they are the whole of the statute's list:

"(A) a debt being paid in a timely manner under an installment agreement under section 6159, or an offer in compromise under section 7122; and (B) a debt whose collection is suspended because a section 6330 due process hearing is requested or pending, or because a section 6015 innocent spouse election is made or relief requested."

Read exception (A) again, because it contains the answer for most people who reach this page. A payment plan you are keeping to takes the debt outside the definition entirely. Not a hardship argument, not an appeal, not a negotiation — an installment agreement.

Note what (A) does and does not cover. An installment agreement being paid on time, or an accepted offer in compromise, are both inside it. A pending offer is not — that sits on the IRS's administrative list below, which is a different kind of protection. And not everyone can get or keep an agreement; unfiled returns block one outright.

The IRS also publishes a further list, and it matters that this list is not in the statute. The IRS says it will not certify debt that is: in currently not collectible status, subject to a pending installment agreement or offer request, or belonging to an identity theft victim. It separately treats child support, FBAR penalties and debt under a Department of Justice settlement agreement as outside the definition.

Those are administrative practice, not statutory rights, and the difference is real. A statutory exception is something you can rely on. Administrative practice is what the IRS says it currently does. Both are useful; only one of them is a rule. Anyone presenting the full list as "seven statutory exclusions" is wrong — the statute has two.

What happens if you do nothing

On the letter itself: another one next year. A CP71C is not a step in a sequence and does not lead directly anywhere.

On the passport question: it depends entirely on requirement 2. If no Notice of Federal Tax Lien has been filed and no levy has issued, certification is not currently in play. If a lien has been filed and the administrative rights on it have lapsed, and the balance is over the threshold, certification is a live possibility and the balance is growing toward it either way.

And penalties and interest continue regardless. They do not pause because collection has gone quiet.

What to do

Step one, tonight, free, and it answers most of the question: find out whether a Notice of Federal Tax Lien has been filed against you. Requirement 2 is the hinge, and until you know the answer everything else is speculation. Your IRS account transcript shows it, and so does the public record in the county where you live.

1. Establish the lien position. See above. This is the whole ballgame.

2. If you are near or over the threshold and a lien is filed, get an installment agreement in place. That is exception (A) and it is the most reliable route out. ⚠️ On this page specifically, the online route is not available to you. The IRS's online application for a long-term payment plan requires that you "owe $50,000 or less in combined tax, penalties and interest, and filed all required returns." Every reader of this page is above the passport threshold and therefore above that ceiling. The route is Form 9465, Installment Agreement Request, by mail or by phone on 800-829-1040 — and at this balance the IRS will generally want a financial statement with it. The setup fee by phone, mail or in person with direct debit is $107. This is not a twenty-minute job and anyone telling you it is has not looked at the number.

3. If you cannot pay anything at all, currently not collectible status is on the IRS's own non-certification list. It is requested at the number on your notice or at 800-829-1040, and the IRS may ask for Form 433-F, or Form 433-A for wage earners and the self-employed. Three things travel with it and none are optional to know: penalties and interest keep accruing, a lien may still be filed, and the debt is not forgiven.

4. If you have travel booked, say so early. Timing changes what is worth doing, and it is the one fact that turns this from an administrative problem into a dated one.

5. If you are already certified and resolve the debt, reversal is not instant and it is not the same as having a passport. That is the subject of the CP508R page.

The part that is harder than it looks: requirement 2's second half — whether the administrative remedies on a filed lien have "lapsed or been exhausted." A lien that has just been filed, with a Collection Due Process hearing still available or already requested, does not meet the test. A lien filed three years ago with nothing done about it does. The same document, the same balance, and two opposite answers depending on dates and events that are nowhere on this notice.

Two things worth reading next, depending on where this goes. How IRS payment plans work covers what an agreement at this balance involves, which is not the online form. And if no payment is possible, hardship status explained covers the route that appears on the IRS's non-certification list.

The IRS Notice Timeline

Which letters would have to have arrived for the passport question to be live. The sheet shows the sequence including where a Notice of Federal Tax Lien and its Letter 3172 sit — which is exactly the fact requirement 2 turns on. If you are trying to work out from a pile of envelopes whether one of them was the lien letter, this is the fastest way.

A first name and an email address — it is a mailing list, and saying otherwise would be silly. The sheet carries figures that move, one of them every January, and this is how the correction reaches you.

[ Get the timeline ]

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

The Kentucky note

Kentucky's equivalent pressure lands somewhere else entirely. Passport certification is a federal mechanism created by 26 U.S.C. 7345, and no route by which the Kentucky Department of Revenue could certify a tax debt to the State Department was found in the statutes we checked. That is a statement about the search, not about the universe.

What Kentucky does have is a licensing consequence with no federal counterpart: under KRS 131.1817 the Department of Revenue can reach professional and occupational licenses, and motor vehicle registration, for unpaid tax.

And the parallel is exact in the part that helps you. The Kentucky statute's own definition of a delinquent taxpayer excludes a liability covered by a current installment payment agreement — so the same arrangement that takes a debt outside federal passport certification under section 7345(b)(2) also takes it outside the Kentucky license statute. One action, two exposures closed. (The separate no-filing trigger is not covered by that carve-out: failing to file within 90 days makes a taxpayer delinquent under the statute regardless of balance.) Kentucky license revocation for taxes covers the state side.

What we see

The passport paragraph frightens people more reliably than almost anything else the IRS sends, and requirement 2 is the reason the fear is usually out of proportion to the position.

The first thing we do with one of these is set the passport paragraph aside and go looking for requirement 2 — whether a Notice of Federal Tax Lien has actually been filed, and if it has, what happened to the rights that came with it. People arrive having read the threshold as the trigger, because the balance is the part of the letter they can see, and it is the number they have been carrying around for weeks. Someone who has already canceled travel is a harder conversation than someone who has not, because by then the fear has cost something real before anyone has looked at the account. What we say first is that the letter states the law correctly and says nothing whatever about them, and that the distance between those two things is closeable with a transcript.

Katherine — you are welcome to revise/modify the above paragraph the way it actually goes when a CP71C lands on your desk.

And something worth saying to the person rather than about the letter: a balance this size usually means several years, and several years usually means a stretch someone would rather not explain. It does not need explaining to fix. Nobody working on this asks how it got here before they ask what is on the account, because the account is what determines the answer and the history does not.

What is worth saying about the letter's design: it states the test correctly and it does not tell you which limb you fail. Those are different jobs and the IRS is only doing the first. The distance between "here is the law" and "here is your account" is most of what makes this notice frightening, and it is closeable in an afternoon.

Where this sits

Notice	What it is
CP71	The same annual reminder, without the passport paragraph.
CP71C▶ You are here	Annual reminder with the passport warning. No deadline; a threshold, not a trigger.
Letter 3172	The lien filing letter — requirement 2. Carries a hearing right whose clock runs from the filing date, not the letter.
CP508C	The actual certification. This is the letter that says it has happened.
CP508R	Certification reversed. You still have to apply for the passport.

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Common questions

Can they take my passport because I owe this?

Not on the strength of the balance alone. Three things must all be true: the debt is over the threshold, a Notice of Federal Tax Lien has been filed with administrative remedies lapsed or exhausted or a levy has issued, and no exception applies. And even then, the ordinary consequence is that a new or renewed passport is not issued — revoking one you hold is discretionary and separate.

Has this already happened to me?

If it had, you would have a CP508C, which is the certification notice. A CP71C is a warning about a process, not a record that it has occurred.

Will a payment plan fix it?

A debt being paid in a timely manner under an installment agreement or an accepted offer in compromise is a statutory exception under section 7345(b)(2). It is the most reliable route out and it does not require anyone to argue anything.

The dollar figure on my letter doesn't match what I've read.

The threshold is adjusted every January for inflation, so an older letter prints an older number. Take the figure from the IRS's current page rather than from the notice, particularly if the letter is more than a year old.

I'm in hardship and can't pay anything. Am I safe?

Currently not collectible status is on the IRS's list of debt it will not certify — but that is administrative practice rather than a statutory exception, which means it is what the IRS says it does rather than something the statute guarantees. It is worth having, and it is worth knowing which kind of protection it is.

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 and the passport threshold changes every January.

The cheapest thing that works here is not us

If you are over the threshold, a lien is filed, and you can afford a monthly payment — the answer is an installment agreement, and it is a statutory exception under section 7345(b)(2). Not an argument anyone makes on your behalf. Not something that gets negotiated. An agreement in place, kept to, and the debt is outside the definition.

You do not need us to ask for one. At this balance it is Form 9465 by mail, or a phone call to 800-829-1040, and the IRS will generally want a financial statement with it — the online application stops at $50,000 and every reader of this page is above it. That is an afternoon's work rather than a web form, but it is work you can do, and people do it. We would rather say so plainly than let you assume otherwise.

Here is where that version stops working, and these are the actual situations:

You cannot tell whether a Notice of Federal Tax Lien has been filed, or whether the administrative remedies on it have lapsed. Requirement 2 decides everything and it is read off a transcript, not off a letter.
You cannot afford any monthly payment, so exception (A) is not available and you are into currently not collectible or an offer — both of which turn on a financial analysis, and only one of which is a statutory exception.
The financial statement is the obstacle rather than the money. At this balance the agreement is not automatic; what you propose and how you evidence it decides whether it is accepted, and a rejected proposal is worse than a considered one.
You have travel booked inside the next few months. Timing changes the order of operations, and this is the one version of this problem with a real date in it.
You are already certified and holding a CP508C rather than a CP71C. Different letter, different problem, and reversal has its own steps.
There are unfiled years behind the balance, which blocks an installment agreement and therefore blocks exception (A).

Requirement 2 is not something you can usually establish from your own paperwork, and that is what the call is for — including when the answer is "no lien has been filed, so none of this is live yet."

The first call is free. Thirty minutes. No obligation, no conditions, no strings. It establishes whether a Notice of Federal Tax Lien has actually been filed against you — the limb that decides whether any of this is live — and if it has, the fastest route into exception (A) at your balance. Pull your account transcript beforehand if you can; it is the document that answers requirement 2, and the IRS gives them out free online. If you have travel booked, say so when you book the call; it changes what gets looked at first.

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Every case here is reviewed and worked by Katherine personally — not a processing department, and not a case manager.

The NLTR Office ·

Reviewed by Katherine M. Johnson, CPA, CTRS