Letter 6174
informationalReporting Virtual Currency Transactions — educational
An educational letter. The IRS knows you have or had virtual currency accounts and wants you to know the rules.
No deadline. The letter says in terms that you do not need to respond.
If it passes. Nothing automatic. Letter 6174-A is the same letter with one sentence added: the IRS may send other correspondence about potential enforcement activity in future.
Why you got it
The same compliance effort that produced Letter 6173, at the lowest level of concern.
What rights it carries
None conferred.
Do you have to respond?
Not required. If you decide to amend, write the letter number at the top of the amended return.
The mistake people make
Two opposite ones. Panicking — this letter requires nothing. And assuming that because it requires nothing, nothing is known: your name reached this list from somewhere.
Virtual currency is property, and it must be reported whether or not you received a payee statement. That is the whole content of the letter, and it is worth acting on before the next one arrives.
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
CP2501 — An earlier, softer version of the CP2000: the IRS has spotted a mismatch but has not yet computed a proposed tax change. Letter 6173 — A compliance demand about crypto. Unlike its two siblings, this one requires an answer by a printed date. CP2000 — The IRS thinks third parties reported income you did not report, and it is proposing — not assessing — more tax. Letter 525 — The examination is over, here is what the IRS proposes to change, and you have 30 days to protest before it becomes formal.Every notice in the library → Not sure it is really from the IRS? →
Sources: IRS — Letter 6174 · IRS — Letter 6174-A · IRS — Voluntary compliance letters. 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.