IRS Account Notices
Jim Buttonow, CPA CITP
Updated on: November 4, 2024
Taxpayers can sometimes get an IRS notice related to their account. The IRS send over 200 million notices a year.
Common account issue notices include:
- Tax identity theft related notices
- Misapplied payments
- Frozen, held, or offset refunds due to non-filing or back taxes or other amounts owed, like student loan debt
- Return discrepancies like dependent deductions or tax credits
- Penalty adjustments due to late payment or incorrect or missing estimated tax payments
The impact on the taxpayer is often additional tax filings, penalties, unwanted IRS notices or compliance enforcement, and taxes owed.
The first step to resolving IRS account discrepancies is obtaining and understanding IRS account information. This step often requires a taxpayer to interview the IRS and to interpret their account transcripts. With this information, taxpayers can validate whether the notice and IRS actions are correct. If a penalty has been assessed, the taxpayer can also evaluate whether penalty relief is warranted.