An LT11 is the last letter before the IRS can take money.
It is also the letter that gives you the strongest procedural right you will get in this entire process, and that right expires on a date printed on the page. Not responding does not preserve your position. It waives it.
If an LT11 or a Letter 1058 is in front of you, the deadline is the first thing to deal with, before you decide anything else.
What is an IRS LT11 notice?
The IRS Independent Office of Appeals gives it a formal title: LT-11, Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing.
Two things are happening in that title at once. The IRS is telling you it intends to levy, and it is telling you that you have a right to contest that before an independent body. It follows the earlier collection notices, generally a CP504, when the balance is still unresolved.
This is the notice that unlocks broad levy authority once its window closes. Everything before it was either a reminder or a narrow authority. This is the general one.
What is Letter 1058 and how does it relate to LT11?
They do the same job.
The IRS Independent Office of Appeals lists Letter L-1058, Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing alongside the LT-11 as a notice carrying Collection Due Process rights. Both appear on the same IRS explanation page, and the IRS treats them together.
The rights are the same, the deadline works the same way, and the form used to respond is the same. If you have received one rather than the other, do not assume yours is the less serious version. Work from the deadline printed on whichever letter you are holding.
What makes an LT11 different from a CP504?
One word: rights.
A CP504 is a Notice of Intent to Levy under Internal Revenue Code section 6331(d), but it is not a Collection Due Process notice. It does not open an appeal window. What it does is authorize the IRS to levy a state tax refund after 30 days, and begin searching for other assets.
An LT11 is a CDP notice. It opens a formal appeal window with a deadline, and once that window closes, the IRS describes what becomes available: “We can attach a levy to your wages or bank accounts up to the amount owed. We may also file a Notice of Federal Tax Lien.”
So the two notices sit on opposite sides of a line. The CP504 gave the IRS a narrow power and gave you nothing procedurally. The LT11 gives the IRS a broad power and gives you the single best procedural tool available in collections, for a limited time.
What is a Collection Due Process hearing?
A Collection Due Process hearing is an independent review of the IRS’s proposed collection action by the IRS Independent Office of Appeals.
At the hearing you can propose collection alternatives, such as an installment agreement, Currently Not Collectible status, or an Offer in Compromise, and argue that the proposed levy is not the appropriate step.
The feature that makes a CDP hearing genuinely valuable is what sits behind it. A timely CDP request preserves your right to petition the United States Tax Court if you disagree with the determination Appeals reaches. That judicial backstop is the thing you lose by missing the deadline, and it is why the date matters more than anything else on the page.
How do I request a CDP hearing?
You file Form 12153, Request for a Collection Due Process or Equivalent Hearing.
On the deadline, use the date printed on your notice. The deadline shown on the notice is generally 30 days.
Be careful here, because it is worth being exact rather than approximate. IRS sources describe this period slightly differently, one referring to 30 days from receipt of the notice and another to 30 days from the date of the notice. Rather than calculating a date yourself from either formulation, work from the deadline printed on your own letter. That is the date the IRS is operating from, and it is the one that governs your case.
Practical points:
- Send it so that you have dated proof of mailing. If the timeliness of your request is ever questioned, that proof is the whole argument.
- Do not wait until the last day. A late CDP request is not a slightly worse CDP request; it is a different and weaker procedure.
- The IRS directs you to request an appeal “by following the instructions on the letter.” Those instructions are specific to your notice; follow them rather than a general description.
Is collection stopped while my hearing is pending?
Usually, but this is not an absolute guarantee and it should not be treated as one.
The Taxpayer Advocate Service describes it this way: “When the IRS receives a request for a CDP or EH hearing, usually collection actions are stopped until the hearing has ended.”
The word “usually” is in the IRS’s own description, and it is reproduced here deliberately rather than smoothed over. The general rule is that filing suspends collection while the matter is pending. Treat that as the expected outcome, not as a certainty you can build around without checking your specific situation.
What if I miss the CDP deadline?
You are not out of options, but you have lost the most important one.
The Taxpayer Advocate Service explains the alternative: “If your request for a CDP hearing isn’t timely, you can request an Equivalent Hearing within one year from the date of the CDP notice.”
An Equivalent Hearing uses the same Form 12153. You still get a review by the IRS Independent Office of Appeals, and collection is usually suspended in the same way.
What you do not get is Tax Court. The Taxpayer Advocate Service states it plainly: “If you disagree with Appeals’ decision, you cannot take it to tax court.”
That is the entire cost of missing the 30-day window. You keep the administrative review and you lose the judicial one. The Appeals determination becomes the end of the road rather than a step you can challenge.
If you have missed the deadline, the one-year Equivalent Hearing window is genuinely worth using. It is a real second chance. It is simply a smaller one.
What can the IRS do after the deadline passes?
The IRS describes the levy authority directly: “We can attach a levy to your wages or bank accounts up to the amount owed. We may also file a Notice of Federal Tax Lien.”
There is one further consequence that catches people by surprise. The IRS notes that under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, the legislation “generally prohibits the State Department from issuing or renewing a passport to a taxpayer with seriously delinquent tax debt.”
For anyone who travels for work or has family abroad, a passport application or renewal being blocked is often the consequence that changes the calculation, and it is rarely the one people expect from a tax letter.
What are my options at this stage?
The resolution options remain, and one procedural move is now available that was not before.
File the CDP request
Distinct from the options below. Filing by the deadline preserves your right to Tax Court review. If you do nothing else by that date, do this.
Pay in full
Ends the matter.
Set up an installment agreement
For individuals who filed on time and have an approved payment plan, the failure-to-pay penalty is reduced to 0.25% per month during that plan, against the 1% per month rate the IRS applies where tax is not paid within 10 days of a notice of intent to levy.
Request Currently Not Collectible status
Pauses collection on hardship grounds without eliminating the debt.
Submit an Offer in Compromise
For situations of genuine doubt as to collectibility. Not the right answer for most people, and not something to pursue on the strength of an advertisement.
What should I do first?
Find the deadline on the notice and put it in your calendar before you do anything else.
This is the one page in this series where the ordinary advice does not come first. Normally the answer is to pull transcripts before acting. Here, the deadline comes first, because everything else can be corrected later and this cannot.
Once the date is recorded, then pull your account transcripts and verify what the IRS has on file: every payment, when it posted, which year it was applied to, and how the balance breaks down between tax, penalties, and interest.
If the deadline is close and the picture is not yet clear, file the CDP request anyway. Preserving the right costs you very little. Losing it costs you the Tax Court option permanently.
When should I get professional representation?
At this stage, for most people, the answer is now.
The usual triggers apply with more force: a five or six figure balance, multiple tax years, unfiled returns, payroll tax exposure, or an intention to pursue an Offer in Compromise or penalty abatement.
But the LT11 has a feature none of the earlier notices has. The right it grants is waived by inaction alone. You do not have to make a mistake to lose it. You only have to let the date pass. A missed CDP deadline is not recoverable by explaining afterward that you did not understand the letter.
If the balance is significant and the deadline is live, this is the point where handling it alone carries a specific, dated, irreversible risk.
How Oasis Tax Advisory Services handles LT11 notices
Most of what is written above is publicly available. That is not the hard part.
What clients pay us for is execution. We pull the transcripts, verify what the IRS actually has on file, identify which relief you genuinely qualify for, and build the submission properly the first time so it does not get rejected on a technicality and cost you six months you did not have.
At the LT11 stage that means protecting the deadline first and negotiating second, in that order, because the sequence is not reversible.
Then we maintain it. A resolution is not a one-time transaction. Installment agreements default when a later year goes unpaid. Offers get revoked when compliance slips. We stay on it so a solved problem stays solved.
Angie Toney, CPA/PFS, has been recognized as a Forbes Best-in-State CPA and named to Forbes’ list of the Top 200 CPAs in the United States. Our practice has saved clients over $1 million in tax liability.
The deadline on your notice does not reopen once it passes. We should talk today.
This article is general information about IRS collection notices and is not legal or tax advice for your specific situation. Deadlines shown on your own notice control. If you have received an LT11 or Letter 1058, confirm your deadline directly from the notice or with a qualified representative.
