What a CP14 is
Notice CP14 is the first notice in the IRS collection sequence. It is issued when a return you filed shows tax due and the IRS records show the amount was not paid in full by the payment due date. It states the tax, any penalty and interest added so far, and a date by which to pay. It is not an audit and it is not a claim that your return is wrong; it is a statement of a balance the IRS believes is outstanding on the return as you filed it.
The notice number appears in the upper right corner. A genuine CP14 arrives by post; the IRS does not send balance-due notices by email, text message, or social media, and any message demanding payment by gift card, cryptocurrency, or wire to an individual is not from the IRS. If you want to confirm the balance independently, an IRS Online Account shows what the IRS thinks you owe.
Why US expats get CP14 notices
- The June 15 extension is not an interest holiday. A US citizen or resident whose tax home and abode are outside the United States and Puerto Rico has an automatic extension to June 15 to file the return and to pay the tax shown on it. Interest, however, runs from the regular April 15 due date on any tax not paid by then. So a return filed and paid in full on June 14 can still generate a CP14, for roughly two months of interest and nothing else. This is the single most common expat CP14, and it is usually small.
- A payment that did not land where you meant it to. Payments from abroad, especially international wires and payments made under a spouse's identification number or against the wrong tax year, are sometimes not matched to the return. The return shows a balance; the money is sitting elsewhere in your IRS account, credited to a different year or a different taxpayer.
- Estimated payments or withholding that fell short. Foreign employers withhold nothing for the IRS, and self-employed expats often owe self-employment tax that the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion does not touch.
- The return itself showed a balance you did not pay. The Foreign Tax Credit and the exclusion reduce most expats' US tax to zero, but not everyone's, and not in every year.
- A late-filing penalty added after the fact. If the return was filed after its due date, the failure-to-file penalty appears on the notice even if the tax was paid.
What the balance is made of
Three components. The tax itself. Interest, which under IRC §6621 is the federal short-term rate plus 3 percentage points, compounded daily, and which the IRS does not waive except where the underlying tax is abated. And the failure-to-pay penalty under IRC §6651(a)(2): 0.5 percent of the unpaid tax for each month or part of a month it stays unpaid, up to 25 percent in total. For a taxpayer abroad that penalty runs from the extended June 15 date, not April 15, which is why the interest-only CP14 described above carries no penalty component. A late-filed return adds the separate failure-to-file penalty on top.
The notice arrived after its own due date
Mail to a foreign address is slow, and CP14 notices are dated when they are generated, not when they arrive. Expats regularly receive a CP14 whose pay-by date has already passed. The date on the notice still governs. Penalties and interest accrue from the statutory dates regardless of delivery, and the right response is the same: act on it now rather than treating a missed date as a reason to wait. If you have moved, the notice may have gone to an old address; the IRS uses the last address it has on file, and Form 8822 updates it.
What to do
- Check that the balance is right. Compare the notice line by line with the return you filed and the payments you actually made. Most CP14 disputes are about payments the IRS has not credited, not about the tax.
- If it is right, pay by the date on the notice. From abroad the practical options are IRS Direct Pay or the Online Account if you still hold a US bank account, a card payment through one of the IRS-listed processors, or an international wire using the IRS's foreign wire instructions. Paying stops the interest and the penalty from that date.
- If you cannot pay in full, ask for time. An installment agreement can be requested online for most individual balances or on Form 9465. Interest and the failure-to-pay penalty continue while a plan is in place, but the penalty rate is lower for balances under an approved agreement, and a plan keeps the account out of the escalation described below.
- If it is wrong, say so by the date on the notice. Respond in writing to the address shown, with copies of the payment records or the return pages that show the error. Where the balance is entirely penalty and the failure was your first, the IRS's first-time penalty abatement may be available; where there is a genuine reason the payment was late, a reasonable-cause request can be made on Form 843. Neither is automatic and neither should be assumed.
- Do not ignore it. An unanswered CP14 is followed by CP501 and CP503, then CP504, and then a final notice of intent to levy that carries appeal rights and a deadline. Separately, a seriously delinquent tax debt (an unpaid, assessed balance over $64,000 (for 2025) for which the IRS has filed a lien or issued a levy) can be certified to the State Department under IRC §7345, which can result in a passport being denied or revoked. A CP14 is a long way from that, but the sequence starts here.
How Capital Tax Limited handles CP14 matters
A preparer at Capital Tax Limited reviews the notice against the filed return and the payment record, identifies whether the balance is correct, and prepares whichever response the facts call for: a payment and confirmation, a request to apply a misapplied payment, an installment request, or a written dispute or abatement request. Where the notice relates to a return Capital Tax Limited prepared, this is part of the compliance engagement; where it relates to a return prepared elsewhere or self-filed, it is handled as a separate consulting matter, scoped to the notice in front of you. Each notice is reviewed on its own facts. Nothing on this page is a determination about yours.
Next step
Send a copy of the notice and, if you have it, the return it relates to. A preparer at Capital Tax Limited confirms what the balance is made of and what the options are before anything is filed or paid.
Get a CP14 notice reviewed Why expats who owe nothing still file