Is this IRS letter real?
We will not tell you that a letter is genuine. Nobody outside the IRS honestly can, and false reassurance in this particular place costs people their savings. What can be established is the opposite: several features mean a letter, email or call is certainly not from the IRS, because the IRS itself publishes that it never does those things. Six questions below, then the IRS's own way to verify a notice number — which is the only answer that actually settles it.
Six questions
How did the first contact reach you?
The IRS says it normally makes first contact by mail delivered by the US Postal Service. Email, text and phone need your prior consent, and of social media it says flatly: a direct message is never from us.
Does it demand payment by a particular method?
The IRS states it never asks for or accepts gift cards, and does not request wire transfers or cryptocurrency. A cheque is payable to U.S. Treasury and nothing else.
Does it threaten you?
The IRS lists threats of arrest or deportation coupled with a demand for immediate payment and no opportunity to question or appeal as one of its three headline red flags. It also says it does not leave urgent or threatening messages.
What does it ask you to send?
The mailed scam the IRS warned about in 2023 asked for exactly this combination — licence photos, mobile number, bank routing information and account type — inside a cardboard delivery-service envelope on a fake IRS masthead.
Is there a notice or letter number in the upper right of the page?
The IRS identifies every notice and letter by a number printed in the right corner. CP is a computer-generated notice; LTR is a letter. That number is what you look up.
Does the wording read like a form, or like a person in a hurry?
In the 2023 mailed scam the tells were typographic and factual, not structural: mixed fonts, awkward capitalisation, the phrase unclaimed property instead of tax refund, and a filing deadline of October 17 when the real deadline was October 16.
The only verification that settles it
Look up the number
Every genuine IRS notice and letter carries a number in the upper right — CP for a computer-generated notice, LTR for a letter. The IRS publishes a search for them at irs.gov/notice. If yours is not there, that is the IRS's own trigger to go to step two.
Call the IRS — not the letter
Individuals: 800-829-1040, 7am to 7pm local time. Businesses: 800-829-4933. Never call a number printed on a letter you are suspicious of; a scammer controls that line, and it will confirm whatever the letter said. The number above comes from the IRS's own telephone assistance page.
The three crypto letters, and what each one actually requires
Letter 6174
no reply neededPurely educational. The IRS believes you may have had virtual currency transactions and wants you to know the rules. No response is required.
Letter 6174-A
no reply, but read itA step up: the IRS believes you may not have reported correctly. Still no response required, but it invites amended returns, and it means your name is attached to data they hold.
Letter 6173
a response IS requiredThe serious one. It requires a reply by the date stated, and the account can be referred for examination if none arrives. Do not treat it as informational because the other two are.
All three are revision 6-2019, from the campaign the IRS announced in July 2019 covering more than ten thousand taxpayers. We found no IRS announcement of a 2025 or 2026 crypto letter campaign or of successor letter numbers. Practitioner commentary expects notices driven by the first Forms 1099-DA — that is a reasonable expectation, not a documented programme, and we will not present it as one. Decode what a letter is asking for →
The mailed scam the IRS documented, and what gave it away
In July 2023 the IRS and its Security Summit partners warned about a letter arriving in a cardboard envelope from a delivery service, on a fake IRS masthead, claiming to concern an unclaimed refund. It asked for photographs of the recipient's driving licence, their mobile number, bank routing information, Social Security number and account type. What identified it was not the envelope. It was mixed fonts, odd punctuation and awkward capitalisation; the phrase unclaimed property where the IRS would write tax refund; a garbled instruction asking for a photograph of the licence showing all four angles; and a factually wrong deadline — it cited October 17 when the real extension deadline that year was October 16. Typography, terminology and a checkable fact. Those are the reliable tells on paper, and they are what question six above is asking about.
What a genuine notice contains
There is no single IRS page listing this as a checklist. The list below is assembled from IRC § 7522 and the IRS's own notice page, and we say so rather than dressing it up as a quotation.
On the page
Your identifying information; the tax year or period it concerns; a notice date; the CP or LTR number in the upper right; a description of the basis for the amounts and what they are — tax, interest, additions and penalties, each identified; contact information. Where the notice proposes a deficiency, a statement of your right to administrative review in the Independent Office of Appeals.
And one thing worth knowing
§ 7522 requires the description, and then says in the same breath that an inadequate description does not invalidate the notice. So a real notice can be thin, vague and still entirely real. A badly written letter is not evidence of a scam — which is exactly why the verification route matters more than reading the tea leaves.
Where to report it
| How it reached you | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Do not reply, click or open attachments. Forward to phishing@irs.gov with subject line IRS or Treasury — as an attachment if you can, so the headers survive. | |
| Text message | Forward to phishing@irs.gov with subject Text, including the sender number, the message, your number and the time. Also forward to 7726. |
| Phone call | Note the number, hang up, report to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on 800-366-4484 or at tigta.gov. |
| A letter in the post | Verify the notice number first. Report a fraudulent mailing to the US Postal Inspection Service, the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, or your state attorney general — not to the Inspector General, which handles phone impersonation. |
| A fake social account | Report it to the platform, then email the URL to phishing@irs.gov with subject Social media. |
Questions people actually ask
Can you confirm my letter is genuine?
No, and nobody outside the IRS can. Anything that looks like a real notice can be forged, and a genuine notice can look thin — the statute says in terms that an inadequate description does not invalidate a notice. What can be established is the opposite: some features mean a letter is certainly not from the IRS. That is what this page checks, and then it points you at the IRS's own verification route.
What is the right way to verify a notice?
Look the notice number up on the IRS's own page at irs.gov/notice. If it does not appear there, or it looks suspicious, call the IRS on 800-829-1040. Do not call a number printed on the letter you are suspicious of — that is the number a scammer controls.
I got a letter about cryptocurrency. Is that a thing the IRS does?
It is. In 2019 the IRS mailed more than ten thousand crypto letters in three variants — 6174, 6174-A and 6173 — and it publishes all three as PDFs on irs.gov. That makes them unusually easy to verify: you can compare your letter against the published original, page for page. Letters 6174 and 6174-A are educational and need no reply. Letter 6173 requires a response by the date it states, or the account can be referred for examination. We could find no IRS announcement of a 2025 or 2026 campaign, so treat any claim of a current crypto letter wave — including ours — as unconfirmed.
Where do I report an impersonation?
It depends how it reached you, and the routes are genuinely different. Email or text: forward to phishing@irs.gov, and forward texts to 7726 as well. Phone: hang up, then report to the Treasury Inspector General hotline on 800-366-4484. A fake letter in the post: report to the US Postal Inspection Service, the FTC, or your state attorney general — not to the Inspector General.
The letter is real and the numbers are wrong. Now what?
That is the common case, and it is not a scam problem. A matching notice compares what an exchange reported against what you filed, and the exchange reports proceeds without your cost — so the proposed tax is calculated as though your coins were free. Rebuilding the basis is the response, and it is what the response kit is for.
Real letter, wrong numbers? That is the usual case.
A matching notice compares what your exchange reported against what you filed. The exchange reports what you sold for and leaves the cost box blank — so the proposed tax is computed as though every coin cost you nothing. Rebuild the basis from your own transaction history, free, and see the real figure before you answer.
Rebuild my numbers — free Decode the letter → Every notice, with its real deadline →
Sources, all retrieved 28 August 2026: IRS How to know it's the IRS · Tax scams · Recognize tax scams and fraud · Understanding your IRS notice or letter · Telephone assistance · Pay by check or money order · Report fake IRS emails and messages · IR-2023-123 · IR-2019-132 · IRC § 7522. This page identifies impersonation; it cannot certify authenticity, and it is not legal or tax advice.