Katherine M. Johnson, CPA, CTRS
A Kentucky Notice of Tax Due: what the 60 days actually decides
The letter says an amount is due, and it may not tell you much about where the number came from. Most people's first instinct is to work out whether they can pay it. That is the second question.
The letter says an amount is due, and it may not tell you much about where the number came from. Most people's first instinct is to work out whether they can pay it. That is the second question. The first one is whether the number is right, because Kentucky puts a fence around that question and the fence closes in sixty days. You are not being difficult by asking; the statute assumes you might.
If you would rather talk it through
Call (800) 236-3741, answered around the clock. Or use the two-column deadline sheet below to check the date yourself.
Key takeaways
- Kentucky's protest window is sixty (60) days from the date of the notice, for assessments issued on or after 1 July 2018. The older forty-five day rule applies only to assessments issued before that date.
- The protest must be in writing, and it must be accompanied by a supporting statement setting out the grounds.
- The clock runs from the date printed on the notice, not from the day it reached you.
- The department is required to show you its working. KRS 131.081(8) requires each notice of tax due to carry a description of the basis of the assessment, the agent's written narrative, and copies of the audit workpapers.
- The same sixty days is when the Department of Revenue says a 25 percent cost-of-collection fee may be added. It is discretionary on the department's own wording, and the statutory carve-outs are narrower than they look.
- Setting up the online payment agreement before you have decided whether to protest gives the protest away. The department's own terms say so in a sentence most people scroll past.
The short answer
You have sixty days from the date printed on the notice to protest it in writing, with a statement of your grounds. That deadline does three things at once: it is the cheap way to dispute the amount, it is when the department may add a 25 percent collection fee, and it is the gate to every appeal that follows. If the number is wrong, protest first and arrange payment second.
What a Notice of Tax Due actually is
A Notice of Tax Due is the Kentucky Department of Revenue's formal statement that it has assessed tax against you. The statute that governs it is KRS 131.110, and its language is worth reading once, because it explains the shape of everything that follows:
"The department shall mail to the taxpayer a notice of any tax assessed by it. The assessment shall be due and payable if not protested in writing to the department within … Sixty (60) days from the date of notice, for assessments issued on or after July 1, 2018."
Two words carry most of the weight. "In writing" — a phone call to the department is not a protest, however helpful the person on the phone is. And "from the date of notice" — not from receipt, not from the postmark. If a letter dated the 2nd reaches you on the 9th, you have fifty-three days left, not sixty.
Before you decide whether the number is wrong, you are entitled to see how it was reached. KRS 131.081(8) requires the department to include with each notice "a clear and concise description of the basis and amount of any tax, penalty, and interest assessed … and the agent's written narrative setting forth the grounds upon which the assessment is made," with the audit workpapers. If you did not get those, asking for them by name is free and costs you none of the sixty days.
A protest is not an accusation and it is not an escalation. It is the ordinary mechanism by which Kentucky finds out whether its own assessment is right. Filing one does not put you on a list.
The three jobs the sixty days is doing
1The cheap opportunity to dispute the amount
After the window closes, the assessment is final, due and owing — and the levy power in KRS 131.500 is expressly conditioned on the taxpayer having either forgone that review or exhausted it.
There is one further door, and most writing on this subject says there is none. The very next paragraph of the same statute provides that "claims for refund of paid assessments may be made under KRS 134.580 and denials appealed under KRS 49.220" — within four years of the date payment was made. So the argument survives, but only for someone who pays first, which is no use at all to someone who cannot find the money.
There is no further hearing before enforcement.
2When the fee can be added
The Department of Revenue states that "a 25 percent Cost of Collection Fee may be added to the amount of unpaid tax due 60 days after the Original Notice Date," on the authority of KRS 131.440.
Read the department's verb, because it matters: may. It is not described as automatic. And it is not a penalty for being wrong — it is a charge attached to a balance that is still unpaid and unprotested at day sixty. On a $20,000 assessment, 25 percent is $5,000. That is arithmetic from the published rate rather than a figure anyone quotes, and it is why sixty days is worth putting on a calendar.
You may be told elsewhere that a protest or a payment agreement keeps the fee off. Read the statute to the end of the sentence rather than to the comma: KRS 131.440(3) excludes an account protested "as of the expiration of the amnesty period," and one under an agreement "negotiated … prior to or during the amnesty period" — and that window closed on 29 November 2024. On the face of the statute neither carve-out reaches anything done today. What is real is the department's own "may", and the commissioner's authority under KRS 131.440(2) to waive collection fees for reasonable cause.
3It starts the appeal ladder
After a protest you may request a conference, and you may request a final ruling in writing — the department must issue one within thirty days of that request. The final ruling is what you appeal, and the route from there runs to the Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals on a different and shorter clock.
The trap in the middle
Here is the part that catches people, and it catches them precisely because they are trying to do the responsible thing.
Kentucky offers an online payment agreement. It is quick, it runs twenty-four months, the minimum is fifty dollars a month, and it stops the feeling of being chased. Its terms page includes this sentence:
"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."
A payment agreement and a protest are not two things you can do in either order.
If there is any real chance the assessment is wrong — a return the department estimated because it never received yours, income that belonged to a closed business — the protest goes first. There is no federal equivalent: an IRS installment agreement does not ask you to concede the balance is correct.
Interest, penalties, and what actually accrues
Interest on unpaid Kentucky tax is 9 percent for 2026, and it is very nearly never waivable — KRS 131.175 lets the commissioner waive "the penalty, but not interest." The one exception is narrow: KRS 131.081(6) relieves penalty or interest where the failure was due to reasonable reliance on written advice from the department, requested in writing.
The penalties matter less for their size than for how they stack, and that is a genuine difference from federal practice:
| Penalty | Rate | Cap | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late filing | 2% per 30 days | 20% | $10 |
| Late payment | 2% per 30 days | 20% | $10 |
| Failing to file at all | 5% per 30 days | 50% | $100 |
Under federal law the first two offset each other. Under KRS 131.180 they do not — subsection (11) says nothing in the section prevents collecting more than one of its penalties. None of that is a reason to panic and all of it is a reason to act inside sixty days.
What I can't promise you
I cannot tell you whether your assessment is wrong until I have seen it and the return behind it. A great many Kentucky notices are correct, and the honest answer after a review is often that the number stands and the real work is arranging how to pay it. It is not the answer people are hoping for, and it changes what you do next rather than ending it.
I also cannot promise a protest will be resolved quickly. Kentucky publishes no processing time for protests. The only clock the statute puts on the department is thirty days to issue a final ruling once you request one in writing — a later step, and one many people never reach.
And I cannot tell you the fee will be waived. The commissioner has authority to waive penalties and collection fees for reasonable cause — defined in KRS 131.010(9) as something "entirely beyond the knowledge or control of a taxpayer who has exercised due care and prudence." That is a harder standard than the federal one, and there is no Kentucky equivalent of first-time abatement.
Which means the unopened envelope is not a defense. It is also not a disqualification from anything: the sixty days runs from the date on the letter whether or not it has been opened, so if the envelope is still sealed, opening it tonight costs you nothing and tells you the one thing that decides what happens next.
What to do next
1Find the date on the notice and count sixty days from it.
Write the deadline somewhere you will see it. If the notice is already more than sixty days old, that changes the plan but it does not end it — go to step five.
2Decide whether the number is disputable before you decide how to pay.
Pull the return the assessment relates to, and compare it against the basis the department is required to have given you. The ordinary reasons a Kentucky assessment turns out to be wrong are unglamorous: a return the department never received, an estimate made in its absence, income attributed to the wrong entity, or credits not applied.
3If it is disputable, protest in writing, with the grounds.
The protest and the supporting statement are separate requirements. You can request extra time for the supporting statement; you cannot extend the sixty days for the protest itself.
You can do this yourself, and plenty of people should. A protest is a letter that says what you are disputing and why, sent inside the window. Where it stops being a letter and starts being a case is later — and there is a stage of the Kentucky appeal process where a CPA is not permitted to act for you at all, which is worth knowing before you hire anybody.
4If it is not disputable, arrange a payment agreement inside the sixty days.
Not because it guarantees the fee stays off — see above — but because the fee is discretionary, engagement is the part you control, and a balance under an agreement is a balance nobody is chasing. Longer terms than the online tool's twenty-four months are negotiated by phone with the Division of Collections.
5If the window has already closed, work out whether paying and reclaiming is realistic before assuming the argument is over.
The refund route under KRS 134.580 runs four years from the date of payment, and a denial is appealable. If paying is not realistic, a payment agreement, an offer in settlement and penalty relief for reasonable cause all stay open — worse options than you had a month ago, and not nothing.
Download: Kentucky vs IRS — the two-column deadline sheet
Every response window on both sides on one page, with the statute beside each one and the date we last checked it. Kentucky's deadlines run from the date on the letter; the sheet is laid out so that you can count from the right day.
First name and email — that is the whole form, and it is how the sheet gets to you. The figures on it carry dates because they go stale; being on the list is how you get told when one changes. One click to stop, and a download is not a request for a phone call.
Frequently asked
Does the sixty days run from when I received the letter?+
Can I protest and pay at the same time?+
What if I never got the notice?+
Does the IRS know about this?+
If you want someone to read it with you
I am a CPA and a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist, and I practice from an office in Georgetown, Kentucky.
Bring the notice and the envelope. Most of what I need is on the first page of the letter, and the date is the thing I look at before anything else.
If the envelope is still sealed, that is a very normal way to arrive. Opening it does not start anything — the sixty days has been running from the date printed inside since the day it was posted, and the only thing an unopened envelope changes is that you cannot see the date.
If the assessment turns out to be right and the answer is a payment agreement you could have set up yourself, I will tell you that.
Two things before you dial, because they are what usually stops people.
First, the money: you will know what this conversation costs before it starts.
Second, the exposure: nothing gets filed and nobody at the department gets contacted without your written authorization. Ringing this office does not put your name in front of the Department of Revenue.
The line is answered at any hour. Overnight that is an automated assistant taking your details; the callback is from a person, in office hours.
More on Kentucky: Kentucky payment plans and offers in settlement · the Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals · the Kentucky section index. Kentucky state matters: state tax resolution.
This article is general information about Kentucky tax law, not tax advice for your situation. Statutes and rates change; the figures here carry the date they were last checked.
Next Level Tax Resolution is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service, the Kentucky Department of Revenue, or any other government agency. No outcome is promised or implied; what any program or provision means for you depends on your own account.
Katherine M. Johnson, CPA, CTRS
Published: August 31, 2026 · Last reviewed: August 2026
Sources: KRS 131.110 · 103 KAR 1:010 · KRS 131.440 · KRS 131.180 · KRS 131.175 · KRS 131.010(9) · Kentucky Department of Revenue, Penalties, Interest and Fees · Kentucky Department of Revenue, Tax Interest Rate effective 1 January 2026 · Kentucky Department of Revenue, Internet Payment Agreement terms. All checked 26 August 2026.
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.
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