Letter 1153: The Trust Fund Recovery Penalty Proposal
By Forrest Baumhover, CFP®, EA · Last verified August 30, 2026
Letter 1153 proposes the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty against you personally under IRC §6672. You have 60 days (75 if mailed outside the US) to protest — miss it, and the penalty assesses.
If you got this letter
Got a Letter 1153 in the Mail?
This letter says the IRS wants to make YOU pay part of a business's unpaid payroll taxes — not the business, you personally. This can happen even if you never owned the business, if the IRS believes you had control over which bills got paid and knew the payroll taxes weren't being paid.
You have 60 days from the date on the letter (75 days if it was mailed to an address outside the United States) to send the IRS a written protest disagreeing with it. If you do nothing by that deadline, the IRS can make this a real, collectible debt against you personally — your paycheck, bank account, and other property become fair game — without giving you another chance to argue against it first.
Because of how much money and how little time is involved, talk to a tax attorney, CPA, or Enrolled Agent about this letter right away, before the 60 days run out. This is not a situation to handle alone or to set aside for later.
What the letter actually proposes
Letter 1153 tells you the IRS has determined you are a "responsible person" who "willfully" failed to collect, account for, or pay over a business's withheld payroll or excise taxes, and that it intends to assess the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty (TFRP) against you personally for that amount. IRC §6672(a) is the statute behind it: a responsible person who willfully fails to collect and pay over trust fund taxes "shall ... be liable to a penalty equal to the total amount of the tax evaded, or not collected, or not accounted for and paid over." This is a 100% personal penalty — it does not split proportionally among multiple responsible parties, and it survives a business bankruptcy or closure because it attaches to the individual, not the entity.
The letter arrives with Form 2751, Proposed Assessment of Trust Fund Recovery Penalty, listing the specific tax periods and dollar amount the IRS proposes to assess. A responsible person is not limited to a business owner — the IRS's own guidance describes the role as reaching "an officer of a corporation, a partner, a sole proprietor, or an employee of any form of business," including a bookkeeper or controller with real authority over which bills get paid.
The 60-day protest deadline
Per IRM 5.7.6.2, Responsible Person's Response to Letter 1153: "the responsible person has 60 days (75 if the letter was addressed outside of the United States) from the date of the mailing of the notice or the date of personal delivery to respond." A protest is timely if it is postmarked or mailed by certified or registered mail on or before that 60th (or 75th) day.
A timely written protest routes the case to IRS Appeals before the penalty assesses. Miss the deadline, and the IRS assesses the TFRP without further notice of a pre-assessment appeal right. At that point, contesting it means paying a "divisible portion" — traditionally the TFRP amount attributable to one employee for one quarter, small enough to afford but enough to establish standing — then suing for a refund in court, or negotiating collection of an already-assessed liability rather than contesting the proposal itself.
How a case gets here
Letter 1153 does not appear out of nowhere. It follows a Revenue Officer's investigation into who controlled the business's finances and who knew the trust fund taxes were unpaid — conducted through a Form 4180 interview (IRM 5.7.4.2.4), where the IRS asks about signing authority, payroll decisions, and awareness of the unpaid liability. The findings from that interview are what IRM 5.7.3, Establishing Responsibility and Willfulness for the TFRP, weighs to decide who receives a Letter 1153 in the first place.
This matters for the protest: a Letter 1153 recipient is not starting from a blank page. The Form 4180 interview record and the responsibility/willfulness factors IRM 5.7.3 lists are exactly what a protest needs to rebut, point by point, rather than a general denial of involvement.
What to do before the deadline
Request the case file — the Form 4180 interview notes and whatever documentation the Revenue Officer relied on — before drafting a protest blind. A protest that addresses the specific responsibility and willfulness factors actually cited carries far more weight than a general disagreement with the proposed amount.
The Federal Tax Desk has a TFRP Exposure Calculator that ranks those same responsibility and willfulness factors, estimates exposure, and tracks this exact protest deadline once a Letter 1153 mailing date is entered — as of this writing that tool is not yet a live, reachable page on this site, so it is named here rather than linked.
What Letter 1153 gets confused with
Letter 1153 is easy to conflate with the business's own collection notices for the same unpaid payroll taxes — CP504 and the Final Notice of Intent to Levy the IRS sends the entity itself. Those notices pursue the business's assets; Letter 1153 pursues the individual, personally, for the trust fund portion only (not penalties or interest the business itself owes), and runs on its own 60-day protest clock entirely separate from either notice's deadline. Paying attention to one does nothing to protect against the other.
It is also not a lien notice. Receiving a Letter 1153 does not itself file a Notice of Federal Tax Lien — that comes only after the TFRP is actually assessed, with its own separate notice and appeal rights (Letter 3172). A responsible person who successfully protests a Letter 1153 before assessment never reaches that stage on this liability at all.
Common Questions
Is Letter 1153 a bill?
No. It is a proposal to assess the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty against you personally, with Form 2751 showing the amount. Nothing is assessed yet — protesting within the deadline is what keeps it that way while Appeals reviews the case.
What happens if I miss the 60-day (75-day) deadline?
The IRS assesses the penalty without a further pre-assessment appeal. Contesting it afterward generally means paying a "divisible portion" — a small enough slice of the penalty to afford, traditionally the amount for one employee for one quarter — and suing for a refund, or dealing with it as an already-assessed collection matter.