CP15
act on thisNotice of Penalty Charge (a civil penalty assessment)
The IRS has assessed a civil penalty against you and is billing you for it.
We could not verify a day count to a primary source. There is no 'Understanding your CP15 notice' page on IRS.gov — only CP15B (trust fund recovery) and CP15H. The 30 days quoted widely elsewhere is unsourced. Read the date on your notice.
If it passes. Collection, on the ordinary schedule.
Why you got it
Assessment of a civil penalty on an individual account — most often an international information-return penalty, which is where a taxpayer with offshore exchange accounts is likely to meet it.
What rights it carries
The general penalty appeal framework, in writing. What is structurally certain: these are ASSESSABLE penalties, not deficiencies, so no notice of deficiency is coming and there is no prepayment Tax Court route.
Do you have to respond?
Treat it as required.
The mistake people make
Treating it like a CP14 and either paying or ignoring it. Because no deficiency notice will follow, this window is the only administrative bite at the apple before collection begins.
The IRM gives two titles for this notice — 'Notice of Penalty Charge' and 'Civil Penalty Notice' — and we could not establish which is current. Both are IRS sources.
If crypto is why this arrived, the number on it is probably wrong.
Your exchange reports what you sold for and leaves the cost box blank, so any figure the IRS computes from it treats every coin as though it cost you nothing. Rebuild the basis from your own transaction history — free — and see the real number before the deadline above runs out.
Notices that arrive around this one
CP14 — Your first bill. Tax has been assessed and it has not been paid. CP49 — The IRS used all or part of your refund to pay a tax debt. CP501 — A reminder that you still owe a balance. CP503 — The IRS has not heard from you and the balance is still unpaid.Every notice in the library → Not sure it is really from the IRS? →
Sources: IRM 20.1.9 · IRS — Understanding your CP15B notice. Retrieved 2026-08-28. Where the IRS publishes no day count we say so rather than repeat a number we cannot source — the date printed on your own notice is the one that governs. ClearBasis is tax software, not a tax adviser, and this is information rather than advice.