Don't Mess With Taxes

In February 2022, the Internal Revenue Service announced that it was suspending several automatic tax notices. The move was prompted in large part by the massive backlog of tax filings that piled up when the agency closed offices as a precaution early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, taxpayers can expect those mailings to resume, starting with 2022 balance due notices.

Current CP14s going out first: IRS Deputy Commissioner for Collection and Operations Support Darren Guillot, who was part of an American Bar Association tax conference panel in Washington, D.C., last week, said that approximately 5-to-8 million CP14 Notices, should start going out by the "end of May" to early June, according to a according to a Thomson Reuters report.

The CP14, which is subtitled "Balance Due $5 or More, No Math Error," is the first and most common notice sent to taxpayers. It advises the taxpayer that there is a tax due, states the amount of tax, including interest and penalties, and requests payment within 21 days.

See more tax forms and more about them at Tax Forms 2023.

The CP14 wasn't on the 2022 notice suspension list. Rather, these mailings are part of the IRS finally getting, to some degree, back to business as usual.

Guillot told the ABA conference attendees these mailings cover "balance due accounts from the 2022 filing season, as well as other balances," and are part of what the IRS refers to as "peak balance due season."

Other halted notices on the way: However, Guillot did say that the IRS also will gradually resume sending other collection notices that were paused back in early 2022. The temporarily halted individual notices are shown below.

Go to IR-2022-31 for links to the notices.

Business notices CP259 and CP959, Return Delinquency, CP518 and CP619, Final Notice - Return Delinquency, also were suspended in 2022.

The IRS so far has not determined when it will resume sending these temporarily halted notices. However, Guillot did say that the mailing of the notices will be gradual.

So if you get official correspondence from the IRS in the next few months, sorry. It may be late, but it is legitimate. That means don't ignore it, which is just one of the pieces of advice in my post Don't ignore that IRS letter and nine other tax notice tips.

You also might find these items of interest:

• 6 more tax forms added to IRS digital signature list
• IRS accepting uploaded docs to resolve certain tax notices
• New IRS tax collection notices offer QR code contact option

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