CP71C
act on thisTaxes Still Owed — Annual Reminder — Your Passport May be Denied or Revoked
The annual statement that you still owe, with the passport warning attached. The plain CP71 is the same reminder without it.
No deadline is stated. That is exactly what makes it easy to file and forget.
If it passes. A federal tax lien may be filed and the account may go to a private collection agency — and the passport consequence it warns about may arrive as a CP508C.
Why you got it
A statutory obligation under IRC § 7524 to notify a delinquent account at least once a year. The C variant issues where the account also carries seriously-delinquent-debt exposure.
What rights it carries
None conferred. It is informational.
Do you have to respond?
No formal response. Action is what matters.
The mistake people make
Filing it as routine paperwork. This is often the last warning before passport certification, and an instalment agreement entered BEFORE certification is a statutory bar to it.
If you are planning to move abroad, this is the notice that should send you straight to an instalment agreement.
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
CP508C — The IRS has told the State Department you owe a seriously delinquent tax debt. Your passport application or renewal will be denied and an existing passport may be revoked.Every notice in the library → Not sure it is really from the IRS? →
Sources: IRS — Understanding your CP71C notice · IRC § 7524. 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.