You got an IRS notice. Here is the boring truth about what happens next.

The envelope is designed to raise your heart rate. The contents usually should not. The overwhelming majority of IRS correspondence is automated matching: a 1099 the computer saw that your return did not mention, an estimated payment applied to the wrong year, arithmetic that disagrees by forty dollars.

What each notice actually wants

A CP2000 is a proposal, not a bill: the computer thinks income is missing and invites you to agree or explain. A CP14 is a balance-due reminder, frequently triggered by a payment that landed in the wrong quarter. Neither is an audit. Neither means anyone at the IRS is thinking about you personally, which is oddly comforting.

The one mistake that converts small problems into large ones is silence. Every notice has a respond-by date, and the machinery escalates on schedule when it hears nothing. Respond on time, even if the response is a request for more time.

Birchwood clients forward the envelope unopened if they like. We read it, translate it, and answer it. That service is included with every return we prepare, because a preparer who disappears when the letter arrives was never really your preparer.