This one can keep growing after the filing charge has gone quiet. It is aimed at the balance, not at the fact that the envelope was late.
Failure to pay is one half of one percent per month, capped at twenty five percent. The amount it uses is the tax the return had to show, after timely payments and refundable credits.
Relief splits in two, and mixing them up is how people wait for a letter that is never coming. One path is an automatic letter the IRS mails when the prior three years were timely. Interest remains on that path. The other path is reasonable cause, which is a request you make. Relying on a preparer usually does not qualify.
This desk explains the difference. Filing that request as your representative is outside this desk. If you need someone to stand in for you, that work belongs with a firm that represents taxpayers, and you should hear that plainly.
Source. Failure to pay is one half of one percent per month, capped at twenty five percent. In a shared month the filing charge is reduced by the payment charge. Read 29 September 2026 at https://www.irs.gov/payments/failure-to-pay-penalty
Working out which charge a letter means, and keeping the books that stop the next one, is what happens here. A hearing, an appeal or any filing made on your behalf as your representative belongs with a firm that does that work, and no CPA license sits at this desk either, so signed reports on your statements go elsewhere as well. You'll hear both of those early rather than late. The longer drawing of the limit lives on the disclosures page.
An automatic letter is not something you draft. A reasonable cause request is. Interest can remain even when a charge is lifted.
Tell us whether a letter already arrived, or whether you are still deciding whether to ask. We will not send the ask in your name.
The form number and whether any relief letter already came are enough to start.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.