Our promise

What it is

A decoder. IRS and state tax notices are form letters. Each one has a code, a known reason for being sent, a printed deadline and a published process behind it. NoticeKey reads the letter you received, matches it to the official record of what that letter type means, and explains it in plain language: what it is, what it claims, every date that matters, your options, and when your situation is bigger than a decoder.

What it will never do

• It never calculates your tax. It reports amounts exactly as printed on your notice and tells you what to check them against. Whether the IRS's math is right is a question for your records.
• It never tells you whether to agree. A CP2000 prints three options. Choosing one is a judgment about your own records that no tool should make for you.
• It never promises outcomes. Penalty abatement, payment plans and Offers in Compromise all exist. Whether any of them applies to you is the IRS's decision, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling something.
• It never invents what your letter doesn't say. Every finding quotes the place in your document it came from. When your document is silent, the decode says the point is not stated and names who to confirm it with. A calm truth helps you more than a confident guess.
• It never keeps your document. Your letter is read once, in memory, then discarded. It is never stored, sold or used to train anything.

Whose side we're on

We never take money from the institutions we critique. No government contracts, no referral fees from tax-resolution firms, no selling your panic to lead buyers. Our revenue is the $48 Response Pack, and money never changes what the tool tells you. Free and paid users get the identical analysis, and payment buys only the paperwork.

When you need more than a decoder

Some situations are bigger than a decoder, and the decode says so on the page so you don't find out later: large disputed amounts, several tax years, a business, hardship, possible fraud. For those, the people to call are Low Income Taxpayer Clinics (free representation if your income qualifies), the Taxpayer Advocate Service (877-777-4778, for hardship and stuck cases), and CPAs and Enrolled Agents whose credentials you can check in the IRS preparer directory.

The fine print, plainly

NoticeKey is not a law firm, not a CPA firm, and not enrolled to practice before the IRS. Everything here is information, not advice. Our notice explanations paraphrase official IRS and state sources, each cited and dated on the page — and the printed text of your own notice always controls.