What’s New

TC 130 freezes an entire account from refunding — not just the return in front of you — because of a liability the IRS says exists somewhere else, and which of two very different release codes posts next tells you whether that money is coming back or already gone.

TC 131 reverses the TC 130 freeze and lets a held refund flow again — but only if the reversal is a true release, because the freeze's other exit, TC 824, ends the same freeze by spending the money instead of returning it.

TC 160 is a Failure to File penalty an Audit or Collection employee computed and posted by hand — distinct from the computer-generated version of the identical penalty — and which one is on the transcript determines whether TC 161 or TC 162 is the code to watch for next.

TC 161 is the code that actually reduces or removes a Failure to File penalty already on the account — and it covers three genuinely different situations that all look identical on a transcript: First-Time Abate, a reasonable-cause claim, and a penalty that should never have posted at all.

TC 162 does not reduce a Failure to File penalty by a single dollar — it removes the restriction a manual TC 160 or TC 161 leaves behind, so the system can compute the penalty on its own again the next time something on the account changes.

TC 167 removes a computer-assessed Failure to File penalty automatically when the return’s due date or the tax due at that date changes — a recalculation, not a reasonable-cause or First-Time Abate determination, and reading it as relief already granted can mean missing abatement the client is still owed.

TC 170 records an underpayment-of-estimated-tax penalty — and the fact worth knowing before anything else is what doesn't remove it: neither First-Time Abate nor reasonable cause reaches this penalty. Whether it was self-assessed on Form 2210, 2210-F, or 2220, or manually assessed by the IRS, decides which of the two narrow statutory grounds that actually work applies.

TC 171 is the code that means an IRS employee manually reduced or removed an estimated tax penalty — and the penalty reason code behind it reveals exactly which of a handful of narrow grounds actually worked.

TC 176 is Master File’s own automatic assessment of the estimated tax penalty, posted with no doc code and no human review behind it — which means the fastest way to reduce one is usually to fix the payment or withholding data feeding the computer’s math, not to argue relief the ES penalty was never eligible for.

TC 177 is Master File’s own automatic reversal of a TC 176 assessment, triggered by the same payment and withholding corrections that created the penalty in the first place — a systemic fix, not a relief argument, and knowing the difference keeps a practitioner from filing a waiver claim nobody needs to evaluate.

TC 180 assesses a penalty for late or short federal tax deposits on employment and excise tax accounts — and three separate, verifiable mechanisms can reduce or eliminate it, from a safe harbor that should have stopped the assessment in the first place to a First-Time Abate rule that names this exact penalty by statute.

TC 181 removes a Failure to Deposit penalty in whole or in part — which route gets there, First-Time Abate, reasonable cause, or a safe-harbor correction, changes both how much comes off and how the request should actually be filed.

CP01A isn't a warning that something is wrong right now — it's an annual PIN reissuance that, entered incorrectly, is what actually gets an otherwise-clean return rejected or delayed.

CP05 puts a refund on hold and asks the taxpayer to do nothing at all — but its follow-up notice carries a real deadline, and conflating the two is where clients lose money.

CP05A isn't the vague refund hold that came before it — it's a specific document request with its own deadline, and answering it like CP05 just costs the client months.

CP11 isn't a proposal — it's a completed assessment, and the 60-day window to force the IRS to undo it runs from the notice date, not from when a client opens the mail.

CP12 reads like good news — a bigger or unexpected refund — but it starts the same 60-day math-error clock that governs a balance-due notice, and that clock doesn't pause for good news.

CP16 bundles two separate IRS actions into one notice — a math-error correction and a refund offset — and only one of them is disputable the way most practitioners assume.

CP21A shows up after the IRS agreed with a change you or your client asked for — but agreeing does not mean the balance it created is optional to ignore.

CP21B reads like routine good news — a refund is coming — but confirming the amount and origin match what you actually filed is what keeps that read from being wrong.

CP22A means the IRS posted a change and a balance is now due — but the reason a taxpayer gets a CP22A instead of a CP21A has nothing to do with who asked for the change.

CP23 opens with the exact same sentence as CP24, but don't assume it carries the same rights as an ordinary math-error notice — Congress carved the automatic 60-day abatement right out of this one, and a client who assumes otherwise loses the response window instead of protecting it.

CP40 means the IRS handed your account to a private company — and that single fact makes it one of the easiest genuine IRS notices to mistake for a scam, and one of the easiest scams to mistake for the real thing.

CP49 says the IRS already took your refund and applied it to a debt you owe them — the money has moved, so the only real question left is whether the debt itself is right.

CP501 is the IRS's first reminder on an unpaid balance, not a new notice and demand — but the statutory lien it describes already exists whether or not you've noticed.

CP503 is labeled the IRS's second reminder, but it borrows its lien warning almost word-for-word from the first notice and grants no levy authority at all — the actual escalation is still one letter away.

CP521 is a routine monthly reminder, not a warning notice — but ignoring it is exactly how a client's installment agreement ends up on the CP523 termination track.

CP60 doesn't touch your return at all — it reverses a payment the IRS decides was posted to the wrong account, and there's no §6213(b)-style right forcing them to put it back.

CP71C is an annual balance-due reminder the IRS sends whether or not a case is being actively worked — and for an account already in Currently Not Collectible status, it usually calls for nothing more than a file note.

CP75 isn't a computer-matching letter like CP2000 — it's a real audit of the specific credits on your return, and the IRS is holding your refund until you prove you qualify.

LT16 sounds like a levy notice and reads like one, but its own printed language admits the actual Notice of Intent to Levy hasn't been issued yet.

Browse the Transaction Code Library index of practitioner reference pages by TC code.

TC 234 assesses a per-day penalty for a late exempt-organization or pension return under IRC §6652(c) — and First-Time Abate cannot touch it. Reasonable cause is the only relief avenue, a fact worth knowing before defaulting to the playbook that works for every other penalty.

TC 235 abates a Daily Delinquency Penalty assessed on an exempt-organization or pension return — and because First-Time Abate does not reach this penalty, every abatement has to be won on reasonable cause alone.

TC 360 adds the IRS’s own out-of-pocket lien and collection costs to a client’s balance — a fourth kind of charge on the account that is neither tax, penalty, nor interest, and that a discharged liability does not automatically erase.

TC 361 reverses a lien or collection-cost fee assessed under TC 360 — but only when the IRS abates the underlying tax in full and the liability wasn’t the taxpayer’s fault to begin with. A negotiated-down audit result doesn’t qualify, even at a zero balance.

TC 470 freezes collection or notices while a claim is worked, but what it actually holds — and for how long — depends entirely on a closing code most transcripts never explain.

TC 481 ends a pending Offer in Compromise, restarts two separate statute clocks on two separate rules — the collection statute by roughly a month, the assessment statute by a full extra year — and opens a 30-day window for the taxpayer to appeal the rejection itself.

TC 482 ends a withdrawn or terminated Offer in Compromise — and current IRM text resolves what used to be a genuinely open question about whether the same one-year assessment-statute extension applies here too.

TC 488 places an account into an agreed payment posture and pulls it out of active collection — but the collection statute keeps running the entire time the agreement is in effect.

TC 489 records an installment agreement default, not a pending review — status 21 sends the module back through delinquent-account collection processing, the reverse of what some transcript guides describe.

TC 528 ends a collection stay at status 41 or 42 and puts the account back wherever it was before the stay began. The collection statute kept running the entire time — status 41 and 42 are not among the IRS’s defined statute-suspending events — even though no public IRM chapter documents TC 528 or the stay itself at all.

TC 531 puts an account back into active collection after a Currently Not Collectible determination — and the collection statute never stopped running while it was gone.

TC 534 writes off one assessment inside an account whose collection statute expired — and it is the transcript entry most likely to be confused with a full-account statute closeout that has not actually happened.

TC 537 ends a Currently Not Collectible status automatically, without anyone reviewing whether the taxpayer can actually pay — and that automation is what separates it from a manual CNC reversal.

TC 560 records a signed Form 872 extending the assessment statute — the deadline for the IRS to bill more, not the deadline to collect what is already billed, and confusing the two is the single most consequential statute mistake a practitioner can make.

TC 860 reinstates a balance the IRS abated by clerical mistake, even after the statute has otherwise run — a narrow reversal power with a sharp legal line that determines whether it applies at all.

A CP14 is the IRS formally demanding payment of tax it has already assessed. It is the opening move of the collection sequence, and the deadline printed on it does something specific that most taxpayers miss.

A CP24 says the IRS recalculated your estimated tax payments and found money in your favor. It is the notice practitioners are least likely to read closely and the one most likely to be reporting a payment that posted somewhere it should not have.

A CP53E says the IRS owes you a refund it cannot deposit. It asks you to enter banking information, it may carry a QR code, and it looks exactly like a phishing attempt — which is why roughly 1.4 million of them drew a Taxpayer Advocate warning and Congressional attention.

LT11, Letter 1058, and CP90 are the same notice under three labels. This is the one that actually authorizes the IRS to take wages and bank accounts — and the one that opens a 30-day window for Collection Due Process rights that expire with it.

Browse the IRS Notice Library index of practitioner reference pages by notice code.

The IRS found a mismatch between what you reported and what a third party told them. Here is what the notice actually authorizes, what triggered it, and the real next step.

A CP3219A is the Statutory Notice of Deficiency. It starts a 90-day clock to petition the Tax Court that no one at the IRS can extend, that runs from the mailing date, and that ends the case if it expires.

CP504 is a real levy notice with a real 30-day clock — but it authorizes far less than most people, including some practitioners, assume it does.

CP523 threatens to terminate your installment agreement and levy your wages or bank accounts — but the notice itself never mentions the hearing right most practitioners reach for first.

Every §10.36 AI-tool compliance card in one place — for diligence review, not a tool itself.

Check Hardship Currently Not Collectible eligibility per IRM 5.16.1.2.9 — income vs. allowable expenses and net asset equity.

Paste an IRS Account Transcript, Wage & Income Transcript, Business Account Transcript, Return Transcript, or Record of Account Transcript and get every transaction code or income document, with the plain-English meaning and IRM citation for each.

Turn a pasted Wage & Income Transcript into a populated Form 433 disposable-income estimate under the IRS Collection Financial Standards.

Calculate the Collection Statute Expiration Date on any IRS liability, with every tolling event shown.

Look up any IRS transaction code and get the plain-English meaning, practitioner next action, and governing IRM citation.

Size a Simple Payment Plan, Guaranteed, or Simple Payment Plan (Business Trust Fund) installment agreement per IRM 5.14.

Run the IRS reasonable-collection-potential formula to test offer-in-compromise viability.

Check First-Time Abate and Automatic Exemption from Penalty eligibility, and rank reasonable-cause arguments.

Compute the qualified business income deduction, including SSTB, W-2 wage, and UBIA limits.

Build a defensible reasonable-compensation range by profession and income.

See what reclaiming your research hours is worth to your practice.

Find the income level where an S-corp election beats sole-proprietor self-employment tax.

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