How we create and maintain our content

Every notice guide, deadline, and procedure on this site is checked against IRS primary sources: the official notice and letter documentation on IRS.gov, IRS publications (like Publication 1494 for levy exemption amounts or Publication 594 on the collection process), and the forms themselves. Where a rule comes from statute — like the 10-year collection limit or Collection Due Process rights — we describe what the law provides in plain English.

Dollar figures the IRS adjusts periodically (setup fees, inflation-indexed penalty amounts) are described structurally rather than pinned to numbers that go stale, and we point readers to the IRS page where the current figure lives. When precision matters to a decision, we say so — and the document the IRS sent you always controls over anything a website says, ours included.

Our guides are researched, written, and fact-checked by the Tax Prep Helpline team, then re-reviewed when IRS procedures change — collection-notice sequences, verification processes, and program rules do shift, and a guide that was right two years ago can quietly become wrong. We update pages rather than letting them decay.

We write for the person actually holding the letter: what it means, what the deadline is, what to do first. We deliberately avoid scare tactics — no countdown-clock pressure, no inflating a routine reminder into an emergency — because accuracy about urgency is part of accuracy.

We are building named, credentialed review (enrolled agent / CPA attribution) into our guides. Until a reviewer's name appears on a page, treat every guide as carefully researched general education — not as advice from a credentialed professional about your specific situation. When named review ships, each reviewed page will say who reviewed it and when.

Nothing on this site is tax, legal, or financial advice, and reading it does not create a professional relationship. For decisions with real stakes — a Collection Due Process deadline, an Offer in Compromise, a levy — talk to a qualified professional (ours or anyone else's) before acting.

The guides, the notice decoder, and the deadline calculator are free and require no signup. Tax Prep Helpline is a commercial service: if you request a consultation, the consultation is free, and we are compensated only if you choose to engage tax services afterward — with costs explained before anything begins. We don't sell your information, and using the free resources creates no obligation.

We are a private company. We are not the IRS, not affiliated with any government agency, and not connected to similarly named companies such as "1800TaxHelpLine."

Found something wrong — a stale deadline, a misstatement, a broken link? Email [email protected] with "Correction" in the subject line and the page URL. Material errors (anything that could change what a reader does) are corrected as a priority; we'd rather fix a page today than defend it.