Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: whatever the letter says, the first four steps are the same, and doing them in this order prevents most of the damage. Verify it is real. Find the deadline. Decide agree or disagree in writing. Keep the proof. Panic and silence are the two responses that reliably make an IRS notice worse.
1. Verify it is genuine, before anything else
Sign in to your IRS Online Account and see whether the notice is there. A real notice has a counterpart in your account; a forged one cannot put itself there — and tax distress is a favourite setting for forged letters. The verification method in full.
2. Find the deadline and treat it as the priority
Deadlines in IRS correspondence are not administrative preferences; several of them close doors permanently. Two in particular:
- 60 days on a math-error notice, to force abatement and restore your Tax Court rights — the 60-day right.
- 30 days on a final notice of intent to levy, for a hearing before an independent office plus Tax Court review — Collection Due Process.
Neither restarts, and neither is recoverable by explaining afterwards. If you do nothing else on the day the letter arrives, date it and diary the deadline.
3. Decide agree or disagree — and say which, in writing
Notices with a response form ask you to state your position and attach support. A partial agreement is a legitimate answer: you can accept one adjustment and dispute another, and proposals like a CP2000 are frequently right about one item and wrong about the next.
Do not file an amended return reflexively. Where you agree and have nothing further to report, the IRS itself says you generally do not need one.
4. Keep the proof, and use the fastest channel
The IRS document upload tool is the quickest route for responses that allow it. Whatever you send, keep the date. Almost every right on these pages is defined by when you acted, and a response you cannot date is a response you may not be able to rely on.
If you cannot pay what is owed
The official routes, in ascending order of difficulty: a payment plan applied for online · temporary delay of collection in hardship · the Offer in Compromise and its free pre-qualifier. And if a penalty is part of the balance, first-time relief may remove it — a relief that is becoming automatic in 2026.
If the process itself has gone wrong — you cannot get an answer, or the IRS is not following its own procedure — the Taxpayer Advocate Service is its independent office for exactly that, and Low Income Taxpayer Clinics provide representation at free or nominal cost. A CPA or an Enrolled Agent can act for you where the amounts justify it.
Every route named here is the IRS’s own or a free public one. We do not sell tax help, we are not paid if you hire anyone, and we do not name private companies. All of it can be done without paying anybody.
Sources and limits
Honest gap. This is the process spine; the specific decodes and their statutory deadlines are on the linked pages, each carrying its own sources. It does not cover audits and examinations, business notices, or state tax correspondence, which follows entirely separate rules.
See methodology and corrections. General information about published IRS procedure, not tax advice. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.
Holding a different letter, or not sure which one you have? Every notice we decode, with the two deadlines that close permanently.