Responding to IRS Letters

Letters from the IRS are notorious for being hard to understand, especially when you are already nervous about your taxes. Relax, the IRS has developed form letters for nearly every tax situation.

The IRS sends out letters for all sorts of reasons: to let you know there was a math error on your tax return, or that you forgot to include all your estimated tax payments, or that you forgot to include a W-2. The IRS will let you know where your mistake is, and what you can do to fix it.

The book Taxes 2005 for Dummies contains plenty of form letters and other suggestions for responding to IRS letters. They also explain the most common IRS notices in plain English and walk you step-by-step on how to resolve the issue.