IRS Collection Due Process: The 30 Days That Matter Most

Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: when a final notice of intent to levy arrives — an LT11, or Letter 1058 — a 30-day clock starts, and it is the most consequential deadline in the entire IRS collection process. Inside it you can demand a hearing before an independent office and, if that goes against you, take it to the Tax Court. Outside it, both of those doors are shut and the levy proceeds.

The right, in the statute’s own words

26 U.S.C. §6330(a) is a prohibition on the IRS, not a favour to you: “No levy may be made on any property or right to property of any person unless the Secretary has notified such person in writing of their right to a hearing under this section before such levy is made.” The notice must come at least 30 days before the first levy action.

So the final notice is not a threat letter. It is the statutory trigger for a right you did not have to earn — and the reason the IRS must send it is that without it, it cannot levy at all.

What a hearing actually is

Under §6330(b), if you request one in writing and state your grounds, “such hearing shall be held by the Internal Revenue Service Independent Office of Appeals” — and it must be conducted by an officer with no prior involvement in your case.

That is the part worth understanding. A Collection Due Process hearing is not an appeal to the same people who sent the letter. It is a different office, with a person who has not seen your file before, and it is where collection alternatives — an instalment agreement, an offer in compromise, currently-not-collectible status — are properly considered on the record.

And then the Tax Court

§6330(d): “The person may, within 30 days of a determination under this section, petition the Tax Court for review of such determination (and the Tax Court shall have jurisdiction with respect to such matter).”

Two separate 30-day windows, then. Thirty days to request the hearing after the final notice; thirty days to petition the Tax Court after the determination. Neither is generous and neither restarts.

How to request it

1. Use Form 12153 (Request for a Collection Due Process or Equivalent Hearing) — it is free and it is the IRS’s own form.
2. File it within 30 days of the final notice. Date the notice the day it arrives; the window runs from the notice, not from when you opened it.
3. State your grounds. The statute requires it, and vagueness wastes the hearing you just bought.
4. Keep proof of filing. The whole value of the request is its date.

If the 30 days have already passed, an equivalent hearing may still be available through the same form — but it does not carry the Tax Court review right. That is precisely what the deadline buys, and precisely what missing it costs.

Getting help with it

A CPA or an Enrolled Agent can prepare and attend the hearing. If cost is the obstacle, Low Income Taxpayer Clinics represent people in collection matters for free or nominal cost, and the Taxpayer Advocate Service is the IRS’s own independent office for cases where the process itself has broken down.

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. Anyone who contacts you after a collection notice promising to make the debt disappear is selling something; the rights on this page are free and already yours.

If your notice says CP90 rather than LT11, it is the same right

The Collection Due Process notice arrives under more than one number, and the number on the envelope changes nothing about the right inside it. A CP90 is, in the IRS’s own words, notice that “We intend to levy certain assets for unpaid taxes and are informing you of your right to a Collection Due Process hearing.” That is the same §6330 right, with the same trigger and the same 30-day deadline, as the LT11 and Letter 1058 this page describes.

So if you are holding a CP90 and searching for what it means, everything above applies to you — the hearing, the independent officer, the Tax Court window, and the fact that the clock starts the day after the date printed on the notice rather than the day you opened it. Request the hearing on Form 12153.

A CP90 also warns that the debt may be certified as seriously delinquent, which reaches a U.S. passport. What we are not telling you is which part of the IRS sends which number. The published sources establish that CP90 and LT11 carry the identical statutory right; none of them — not the notice pages, not Publication 1660, not the Code or the regulation — says which operating function issues which. We are not inventing an explanation for a difference that may not matter.

Sources

26 U.S.C. §6330(a), (b), (d), read at the Legal Information Institute on 2026-08-07. Quotations are the statutory text.

Honest gap. This page covers the right, its two deadlines and how to invoke it. It does not cover what a hearing decides on the merits, the difference between a CDP and an equivalent hearing beyond the review right, or the separate rules for a lien filing as opposed to a levy.

See methodology and corrections. General information about published law and IRS procedure, not tax advice. No advertising appears on this page and we earn nothing from it.