Alidade does not represent clients before the IRS
Alidade does not represent clients before the IRS. This template is a working document you complete on your own or with Alidade's administrative support. When representation is required, we route you to a credentialed partner; their engagement, pricing, and retainer happen with you, separately.

Notice explainer · LT 11

LT 11 — final notice, the CDP hearing right.

LT 11 is the IRS’s Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing — the notice that attaches the 30-day Collection Due Process (CDP) appeal window to the IRS Office of Appeals. This explainer reads it in five sections: what it actually is, what it explicitly does NOT say (so the calming framing comes first), the documents the notice implies, the 30-day window that runs from the notice date, and where self-service stops and a credentialed partner starts. Calm voice, same vocabulary as the intake and the Action Plan.

What you’ll get

  • Plain meaning.What LT 11 is and what it isn’t — including the CDP hearing right — in plain language.
  • What it does NOT say. No levy yet, no closed door, no court summons.
  • Implied docs. The five documents the notice quietly asks for.
  • 30-day clock. The CDP request window — and what comes after.
  • Self vs partner. When self-service fits — and when the matter needs a tax attorney.

Section 1 · Plain meaning

What LT 11 actually is.
Three short paragraphs. Section 2 calms the framing down further by naming what LT 11 explicitly does NOT say.

LT 11 is the IRS's Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing. It arrives on a balance the IRS has already chased through CP 501, CP 504, and (depending on the path) the parallel lien-warning paperwork. The word 'Final' here is statutory language for the appeal vehicle that follows — it is not a statement that a levy has happened yet.

LT 11 attaches a Collection Due Process (CDP) hearing right. The CDP hearing is an administrative appeal to the IRS Office of Appeals — not a court, not a jury, not a judge. Filing Form 12153 inside the 30-day window freezes collection on this balance for the duration of the appeal, lets you raise defenses (lien validity, collection appropriateness, payment-term alternatives), and produces a written determination that itself has a further appeal path.

Reading LT 11 calmly means reading three facts: the tax year on page 1, the 30-day CDP request window on the upper portion of the notice, and the IRS-side contact line in the upper-right. The Tax Resolution Action Plan reads the same three facts and converts them into a written plan. Alidade does not represent clients before the IRS — when representation is required, this explainer routes you to the partner directory, separately, with no retainer on our side.

Section 2 · What LT 11 does NOT say

Three things this notice does not do.
LT 11 looks heavier than it is. Read this panel first if the panic is louder than the plan.
  1. 01

    LT 11 is not, by itself, a levy. The notice states the IRS's intent to levy if the 30-day window closes without a CDP hearing request — the levy itself is a separate, later vehicle on a separate clock. The brief here is to file Form 12153 inside the window; the levy does not arrive on the Day-30 mark, it arrives later, after the IRS runs the post-window process for any balance on which no appeal was requested.

  2. 02

    Missing the 30-day window does not close every door. A later Equivalent Hearing (sometimes called a CDP-Equivalent Hearing) may still be available — it is not the CDP hearing, the appeal rights are narrower, and the appeal path that follows is different, but the matter is not closed. Reading missing the window as "everything is lost" overstates the result and understates the post-window options the attorney will still discuss with you.

  3. 03

    The CDP hearing is administrative, not judicial. There is no judge, no jury, no motion calendar. The IRS Office of Appeals hears the matter; the determination it issues is itself appealable to the U.S. Tax Court on certain grounds. Reading LT 11 as a court summons overstates what the paper actually says and skips past the engine the brief points to — Form 12153 inside the 30-day window.

Section 3 · Implied documents

Documents the notice implies you’ll need.
LT 11 doesn’t ask for a list of documents — but it quietly assumes them. Pull the same five the intake pre-loads into the Action Plan when you pick LT 11.
  1. 01

    The LT 11 notice AND the IRS envelope (envelope date proves the deadline)

    The 30-day CDP window begins on the notice date printed on page 1 — not the date you received it, and not the date the IRS mailed it. The envelope postmark is the supporting evidence in any later dispute; keep both pieces of paper together so the deadline math is documented from day one.

  2. 02

    IRS wage & income transcripts for the years at issue (request via Form 4506-T)

    The transcript reconciles what the IRS believes against what you actually carry. Pulling the wage & income / account transcripts before the hearing lets the attorney test the IRS-side numbers against your own records; without them, the hearing prep runs on assumption rather than evidence.

  3. 03

    Full Form 433-A (Collection Information Statement)

    Form 433-A is the worksheet the IRS uses to evaluate any payment proposal — installment, offer-in-compromise, or hardship / currently-not-collectible. Completing it cleanly before the hearing avoids back-and-forth on numbers and keeps the proposal response-ready on Day 21 of the window, when the attorney needs it.

  4. 04

    Asset and liability documentation (real estate, vehicles, retirement balances)

    Net equity in real estate, vehicles, and retirement balances is the second half of any hardship substantiation. The IRS will ask for these at hearing; pulling statements and valuations before the 30-day window closes keeps the proposal honest and ready for review rather than assembled under deadline.

  5. 05

    Hardship affidavit and substantiation documents

    If the proposal is hardship / currently-not-collectible, the IRS asks for substantiation — not a narrative. A hardship affidavit with medical bills, eviction notice, or utility-shutoff letter stacks converts the hardship claim into a document the IRS accepts on review during the hearing itself.

Section 4 · 30-day CDP response cycle

How the window unfolds from LT 11.
The 30-day CDP hearing request window is the statutory date in this explainer — the only one. Day 60 and beyond are hearing-prep and Equivalent-Hearing posture under attorney direction.

  1. Day 0

    LT 11 — Final notice arrives

    Day zero. The notice names the tax year on page 1, prints the 30-day CDP request window prominently on the upper portion, and gives the IRS-side contact line in the upper-right. The envelope postmark + the notice date are now the two dates the deadline math runs on.

  2. ~Day 30

    CDP hearing request deadline (Day 30)

    This is the only date in the explainer that is statutory, not illustrative. A Form 12153 (Request for a Collection Due Process or Equivalent Hearing) must arrive at the IRS by the 30-day mark — the IRS-side contact line on the notice shows where. Filing inside the window freezes collection on this balance for the duration of the appeal; missing it forfeits the CDP path, though an Equivalent Hearing may still be available later.

  3. ~Day 60 (≈9 weeks)

    Hearing prep + Form 433-A complete (~Day 60)

    While the appeal is pending, hearing prep runs in parallel: the full Form 433-A is completed and substantiation (hardship affidavit, financial-affidavit stack, asset / liability documentation) is pulled. The attorney signs the CDP request; the client signs the evidentiary submissions. The IRS Office of Appeals schedules the hearing — this is the moment the matter becomes 'administrative formal,' not just 'administrative.'

  4. ~Day 90 (≈3 month)

    Hearing held / Equivalent Hearing posture (Day 90+)

    The hearing is held or, if the 30-day window was missed, the equivalent-hearing posture is set. The Office of Appeals issues a written determination; certain grounds are themselves appealable to the U.S. Tax Court. Whatever the determination, the LT 11 itself stops being the live document — the appeal path that follows is the live vehicle, separately, on its own clock.

Day 30 alone in this timeline is statutory; the rest are illustrative — IRS practice guarded by attorney direction, not a deadline calendar. The action-plan editor computes the response dates from the notice date; the dates here are the “roughly” that the brief asks for.

Section 5 · Self-service vs credentialed partner

When self-service is fine — and when you need a partner.
Labels match the Action Plan editor’s referral flag, so an LT 11 routed here reads identically to the same matter routed through the intake.

Tier · EA

Enrolled Agent

Hardship substantiation paperwork + IRS transcripts + paperwork behind the CDP filing, under attorney direction. Eligible to file Form 433-A, gather financial information, and request transcripts; not the practitioner who signs the CDP request itself. The EA can do the bulk of the evidentiary work that the attorney then presents at hearing.

See partner directory

Tier · CPA

CPA

Multi-year return preparation tied to the open balance. When the unfiled years are the biggest part of what you carry, a CPA engagement covers the preparation alongside the collection matter — so the same set of numbers supports both the returns and the action plan, and the hearing prep runs against a reconciled set of records rather than gaps.

See partner directory

Tier · ATTORNEY

Tax attorney

The default LT 11 route. A tax attorney signs and files Form 12153, handles the CDP hearing at the IRS Office of Appeals, and arbitrates the determination's further appeal path. The matter is a legal one — statutory interpretation, lien/levy appeals, hearing representation — and the partner's retainer is separate from Alidade's administrative support. EA and CPA cannot stand in for the credential here.

See partner directory

Self

Not required

Self-completion is very narrow at LT 11: the CDP hearing request is filed by the practitioner who signs Form 12153, and the hearing itself runs through the IRS Office of Appeals. There is no clean self-completion path on this notice — the calm and accurate framing is "do the intake, route to the partner directory, retain counsel separately," which the closing CTA below does.

Open the Action Plan

LT 11’s default route in the editor is Tax attorney — a tax attorney signs and files Form 12153 inside the 30-day window, handles the CDP hearing at the IRS Office of Appeals, and arbitrates the determination’s further appeal path. The other three tiers are engaged when the matter runs on supporting paperwork (EA), multi-year return prep (CPA), or when no credential is needed and the intake self-completes — though on LT 11 that self-completion path is narrow, as the Self card above notes.

Previous steps in the IRS trail

If you got to LT 11 from CP 504 or CP 501.
LT 11 usually arrives after the earlier billing notices. The explainer for each one is one click upstream — context only, not escalation.

Notice · CP 504

Second billing notice — before potential levy.

The 30-day window CP 504 kicks off is the last administrative stage before the LT 11 paperwork arrives.

Read the CP 504 explainer

Notice · CP 501

First billing notice — the very first written record.

The CP 501 explainer is the calmest read in the library; running through it makes the LT 11 framing easier to place.

Read the CP 501 explainer

Next step

Start the intake — pick LT 11.

The intake’s first field is the notice type. Picking LT 11 pre-loads the Action Plan template with the same five documents the Section 3 panel above lists, the same referral flag (Tax attorney), and a deadline list that flows from the same 30-day CDP window above. No account, no retainer, no commitment — five fields and you have a written plan on the next screen.

Start intakeBack to all noticesSee the partner directory

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