LT14 Notice: The IRS Shows a Past Due Return or Balance and Could Not Reach You

What LT14 means

The IRS page for this notice says: “You received this notice because our records show you have an unpaid or past due return, and we’ve been unable to reach you.” In plain words, the IRS thinks you owe money, owe a return, or both, and it wants to hear from you.

LT14 comes from the IRS’s collection staff. The Internal Revenue Manual (IRM), the IRS’s staff rulebook, gives it the title “You Have Past Due Taxes” and says the back of an LT letter generally lists the tax periods the IRS shows as unpaid or unfiled, though staff can leave some periods off (IRM Exhibits 5.19.5-2 and 5.19.5-5).

If you owe a balance

The IRS page says to pay your balance in full to avoid paying more in penalties and interest. IRS Direct Pay lets you pay from a checking or savings account at no cost.

If you can’t pay the full amount, the IRS page says to explore other options for resolving the balance. A payment plan lets you pay in monthly amounts; our payment plan calculator estimates a monthly payment before you apply. If you cannot afford any payment at all, the IRS can delay collection for a time, and our CNC calculator helps you test that option.

Know the trade-off before you choose. The IRS page says that if you pay only part of the balance, or choose a payment plan or a collection delay, penalties and interest keep adding up until you pay the whole balance.

If you have a past due return

The IRS page says to file a past due return by the date on your notice to avoid more penalties. The IRS guide to filing past due tax returns says to file every return that is due, even if you cannot pay in full, and to send it to the place the notice names.

If you think you already filed, or that you did not have to file, our guide to return delinquency notices walks through those answers for the CP59 and CP515 family of IRS letters.

What people mistake LT14 for

Some people read LT14 as a levy, an IRS order that takes money or property. It is not. Nothing on the IRS page for LT14 says the IRS has decided to take anything; it asks you to pay, to file, or both.

Others set it aside because they think they already settled the account. The IRS page ties LT14 to a balance or a return its records still show, so compare the notice with your own records and answer by the date on it.

And some read the disaster sentence as a pass. The IRS page says only that people recently affected by a disaster “may be able to get relief.” It does not say LT14 is a mistake for them.

For practitioners: what to check first

Check for disaster relief first. IRM 5.19.5.10.1 tells collection staff to restart collection, once a disaster postponement ends, with a “soft contact” LT14 and a 25-day follow-up, then move the case to its next step. An LT14 that lands soon after a postponement ends can mean the account is moving back into normal collection, not that the IRS ignored the relief.

Read the back of the letter before you call. IRM Exhibit 5.19.5-2 says the back generally lists delinquencies by period, form type and amount, so one LT14 can cover a balance on one year and a missing return on another.

Weigh the running cost. Under the LT14 page, penalties and interest keep running on a payment plan or a collection delay, so compare that cost with other ways the client might raise the money.

Common Questions