LT11: the Final Notice, and the 30 days that matter most

An LT11 is the letter that starts the only clock in the collection process you can actually lose. Here's how long you have, what it's counted from, and what a hearing is genuinely worth.

Key takeaways

• •An LT11 is the Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing. Letter 1058 and CP90 are the same instrument delivered differently.
• •You have 30 days from the date of the notice to request a Collection Due Process hearing. Counted from the date printed on the letter — not from the day it arrived.
• •The request is made on Form 12153. While a timely request is pending, levy action is not permitted for that tax and period, with narrow statutory exceptions.
• •Miss the 30 days and a lesser remedy remains for a year — an equivalent hearing — but it carries no levy protection and cannot go to court.
• •Asking for a payment plan or an offer bars the levy while the request is being processed. Section 6331(k), with narrow exceptions. For most people at this stage it is the most useful step available.
• •A timely hearing request also lengthens the period the IRS has to collect from you. That is a real cost and it belongs in the decision.

If you want the date on your account confirmed rather than estimated: (800) 236-3741, or Book thirty minutes →. Filing the form is the easy half and you should do it today either way.

What happens if you do nothing

If the 30 days closes and nothing has been filed, the IRS may levy.

A wage levy is continuous — it does not take one payment and stop; it stays attached until it is released or the balance is paid, and a portion of your wages is exempt from it. A bank levy works the other way: the bank freezes the funds and holds them for 21 days before sending them to the IRS. Those 21 days matter more than they sound like they should: it is a genuine window in which a levy can sometimes still be released before the money leaves the account.

A Notice of Federal Tax Lien may also be filed. A lien is not a levy — it takes nothing, it attaches to what you own and becomes a public record.

The concrete consequence of letting the 30 days pass is not that things get worse in general. It is that you lose the ability to have this discussed before it happens rather than afterwards. Everything on this page remains available in some form after a levy. All of it is harder, and one of it — the stop on collection while you argue — is gone.

What to do in the next 30 days

1. Find the date on the letter and count from it. Write day 30 on the envelope. Most of what follows is easier if you know how much room you have.

2. If any required returns are missing, start there — and know that this is the ordinary version of this situation. Most people with unfiled years did not decide not to file. They had a bad year, missed one, and the next one was harder to face than the last. Nobody here is going to be surprised by it, and the number of years you actually need to file is usually narrower than "every year I missed." The reason to fix it first is mechanical rather than moral: a payment plan, hardship status and an offer all require your required returns to be filed, so nothing else opens until it is done. How many years of unfiled returns you really have to file →

3. Decide whether you are disputing the amount or the collection. These go different places. A CDP hearing is about collection — whether a levy is appropriate, whether an alternative would work. If the underlying balance is wrong because a return was never filed or a payment was misapplied, that is usually fixed on the account rather than at a hearing.

4. Pull the transcripts before you decide anything. You can request them yourself and they are free. Reading them is the harder part, and here it decides one thing in particular: whether you had an earlier opportunity to dispute the balance, which governs whether you can argue it at the hearing.

5. Arrive with a collection alternative rather than an objection. A payment plan, an offer, or a case that you cannot pay anything right now — a hearing goes better with one of those in hand. What currently not collectible status actually is →

6. File Form 12153 inside the 30 days even if the rest is unresolved. The form preserves the right. The argument can develop afterwards. The reverse is not true.

7. If a wage levy has already landed, that is a different and faster problem. Wage garnishment release →

The situations that change this answer

Everything above is the ordinary case. These are the ones that come up often enough that it is worth knowing which of them is yours, because several of them are better news than the letter suggests.

A payment plan or an offer, once it is being processed, stops the levy. This is the most useful thing on this page and almost nobody publishes it. Section 6331(k) of the tax code says no levy may be made while a request for an installment agreement 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. The same protection runs while an installment agreement is in effect and for 30 days after one is terminated.

Two things to be precise about, because the protection is narrower than it first reads. "Pending" has a defined starting point — for an offer, the statute says it begins "on the date the Secretary accepts such offer for processing," which is not the day you post it. And it is a bar on levy, not on everything: it does not stop a Notice of Federal Tax Lien being filed, and it does not stop interest and penalties accruing. It also does not undo a levy already served — that is a release question, below.

And the cost, which belongs in the same breath: a pending offer suspends the ten-year collection period, the same way a hearing request does.

Two limits travel with it, and neither of them touches the hearing right you already hold. Section 6331(k)(3) borrows the exceptions in section 6331(i)(3), so the bar gives way where the IRS finds collection is in jeopardy, and it does not stop a federal refund being taken as an offset under section 6402.

Your home is the hardest thing the IRS can reach. Under section 6334, 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. For property used in a trade or business, the IRS must first determine that your other assets are insufficient. This is not the same as saying they cannot take a house — with a court order they can, and it happens. It is that the house is at the far end of a process, not the near end, and most people reading this letter believe the opposite.

Some income cannot be levied at all. Section 6334 exempts a list of categories outright: unemployment benefits, workers' compensation, certain service-connected disability payments, certain public assistance, judgments for the support of minor children, tools of your trade, and a minimum amount of wages. Two of those categories carry dollar caps that are adjusted every year, so we are not going to print a figure here that would be wrong by January. Social Security is not on the exempt list — which is the statutory reason a separate notice, a CP91, can reach up to 15% of it.

If the balance is old, ask how old before you do anything else. The IRS generally has ten years from assessment to collect, and each year on your account carries its own clock. Section 6343 requires the IRS to release a levy where the liability "becomes unenforceable by reason of lapse of time."

This is the one place where acting can cost you something, because requesting a hearing pauses that clock. It is not an argument for ignoring the letter — a levy inside the remaining period will still happen, and ignoring it is how most people lose the years they had. It is an argument for finding out the dates first and choosing deliberately.

You may have used your hearing already. Section 6330(b)(2): a person is entitled to only one hearing "with respect to the taxable period." If you went through a CDP hearing on this year before, a later notice does not give you a second one, and the equivalent-hearing route may be all that remains.

If a levy has already landed, the question is release, not appeal. Section 6343 requires the IRS to release a levy where the balance is paid, where the collection period has expired, where release will help you pay, where you enter an installment agreement whose terms do not allow the levy to continue, where the levy creates an economic hardship, or where the property is worth more than the debt and a partial release would not hinder collection.

On hardship the IRS draws a distinction in its own words that is worth reading twice: "If the levy on your wages is creating an immediate economic hardship, the levy must be released. If the levy on your bank account or other account is creating an immediate economic hardship, the levy may be released." Must, and may. And the IRS's own caveat travels with it: "The release of a levy does not mean you don't have to pay the balance due."

If you are married and the balance is not really yours. Innocent spouse relief is a separate route with its own form and its own timing, and it is not something a CDP hearing resolves. It is worth raising early rather than late, because the two processes run on different clocks.

If you are considering bankruptcy, that is a different body of law and it changes this analysis in ways this page is not the place to work through. Get advice specific to it before deciding anything here.

After the hearing — for later, and worth knowing exists

Nothing below applies until Appeals has actually decided. If you are still working out whether to request a hearing, skip to the Kentucky note; this section will be here when you need it.

If Appeals decides against you, that is not automatically the end.

You have 30 days from the determination to petition the United States Tax Court. Section 6330(d)(1). It is a second 30-day window, it runs from a different document than the first one, and a reader who has been told "a CDP hearing can go to court" and not told the window is 30 days has been given half a right.

Two different things continue after Appeals decides, and only one of them is in your favor. Section 6330(e)(1) suspends levy action while the hearing and any appeal are pending — that is the protection, and it runs through the appeal. The same subsection also provides that the collection period "shall not expire before the 90th day after the day on which there is a final determination in such hearing" — and that one runs against you, extending how long the IRS has. On an old balance the 90-day tail is part of the arithmetic and it belongs on the cost side of it.

And you can end the suspension yourself. Publication 1660 says the collection period is suspended until the determination becomes final "or you withdraw your request for a hearing in writing." Withdrawing gives up the protection and stops the clock running against you. On a balance close to its ten years, that is occasionally the right trade — and it is a trade nobody makes by accident.

The Kentucky note

If you have a Kentucky balance as well as a federal one, the thing to understand is that the state has no equivalent of the letter you are holding.

Kentucky's collection statutes provide one review, and it sits at the assessment stage rather than the collection stage: a 60-day protest under KRS 131.110, counted from the date of the notice and made in writing, then a conference, a final ruling, and the Board of Tax Appeals. There is no state hearing right triggered by a lien filing or a levy the way section 6330 triggers one federally.

There is also a cost on the state side with no federal counterpart: a 25% cost-of-collection fee the Department of Revenue applies under KRS 131.440.

Read the statute's own scope before relying on either side of it. KRS 131.440(1) opens "For purposes of the program described in KRS 131.400(3)" and imposes the fees "after the expiration of the tax amnesty period" — so the 25% on "all taxes which are or become due and owing to the department" sits inside that scope, and the carve-outs in subsection (3) are anchored to the same period. What is not in doubt is the department's practice: DOR publishes that the fee "may be added to the amount of unpaid tax due 60 days after the Original Notice Date." The 60-day trigger is the department's implementation, not statutory text, and a protest or a payment agreement should not be relied on as a shield — the (3) carve-outs reach an account protested as of the expiration of the amnesty period, or under an agreement negotiated prior to or during it, and how DOR applies them now is not settled on the published sources. The reliable route is the waiver: KRS 131.440(2) gives the commissioner discretion to waive collection fees for reasonable cause.

That is not a claim that Kentucky can take your wages without warning — it can't, and it has its own notice requirements. It is that Kentucky's protection sits earlier in the sequence. Federally, you are being handed a door at the collection stage. On the state side, if there is a Kentucky balance being collected, that door closed some time ago.

The practical consequence is a sequencing one, and it is the most common thing people get wrong when both are live. How a Kentucky balance and an IRS balance interact →

Sources: KRS 131.110(1)(a); KRS 131.500; KRS 131.510; KRS 131.515; KRS 131.440(1), (2) and (3); Kentucky Department of Revenue, Penalties, Interest and Fees. Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Reviewed 5 September 2026.

What we see

Two things happen almost every time an LT11 comes across the desk. The person has counted their 30 days from the day the envelope arrived rather than from the date printed on the letter, so the first thing we do is find that date — and then spend the more useful hour on the transcript, checking whether an earlier notice already used this year's hearing right, because that is the fact that decides what the form is worth. The other pattern is the one nobody writes for: plenty of these letters surface late, brought in with something else entirely and already past day 30, and the conversation then is about what is still open rather than about what was lost. We would rather have that conversation than let someone conclude the whole file is closed because one date went by.

Katherine — you are welcome to put your own account of an LT11 here.

Katherine is a CPA, which places her in the category of representative the IRS recognizes as having unlimited rights to act for a taxpayer before it — able to file a Power of Attorney, pull the full account directly, and take it up with the Practitioner Priority Service. On a letter with a 30-day fuse, that matters for a mundane reason: it is the difference between arguing from what the notice says and arguing from what the account says.

What you can do without us, and what this page cannot tell you

Form 12153 is a form, and plenty of people file it themselves. If your 30 days is still open, file it today whether or not you ever speak to us — that half needs nobody. What this page cannot tell you is what sits behind the letter, because we cannot see your account from here.

These four facts are on the transcript, none of them are on your notice, and any one of them changes what the form is worth:

• Whether an earlier Final Notice already used this year's hearing right.
• Whether a lien has been filed, or a levy is already in progress.
• How much of the ten-year collection period is left on each year — which decides whether the suspension a hearing causes is a price worth paying.
• Whether a notice of deficiency was ever issued, which governs whether you can argue the balance at all.

Filing the form is the easy half. The rest is thirty minutes on the phone — (800) 236-3741, or Book a time →.

Where this sits in the sequence

Frequently asked

If you'd rather not work it out alone

We handle IRS collection matters for individuals and small businesses from our office in Georgetown, Kentucky. If an LT11 has arrived, we can pull the account, tell you where the 30 days actually stands, and say what is realistically available — including if the honest answer is that you can file the form yourself and don't need us for the rest.

The first call is free. Thirty minutes. No obligation, no conditions, no strings. You will come away knowing the date your 30 days actually closes, whether a Final Notice already issued on this year, how much of the ten years is left, and whether you need us for the part after the form. You do not need your paperwork organized; the notice and a rough sense of the years involved is enough to start.

Call (800) 236-3741, or (502) 658-6328 locally — or Book a time →. The line is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so if it is late and you have just opened the envelope you can start tonight. After hours you reach our AI receptionist rather than voicemail — it answers the common questions, takes your details, and books you the first available thirty minutes. Katherine works the account herself.

This article is general information, not tax advice for your situation. Every account is different, the options described here are not available to everyone, and no outcome is guaranteed.

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

Talk to someone before the 30 days closes

The first call is free. Thirty minutes. No obligation, no conditions, no strings. You will come away knowing the date your 30 days actually closes, whether a Final Notice already issued on this year, and whether you need us for the part after the form.