What Letter 1058 means
Letter 1058 carries the same legal weight as the LT11: it's the Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing that the IRS must send before most levies. It lists the tax periods, the amounts owed, and the date by which you must act. After 30 days, the IRS can levy wages, bank accounts, receivables, retirement income, and other property for those periods.
What's often different is who sent it. The LT11 typically comes from the IRS's centralized Automated Collection System. Letter 1058 is frequently issued by a Revenue Officer, an IRS employee assigned to collect your account in the field. Revenue Officers handle larger balances, business accounts (especially payroll taxes), and cases with complications. Some ACS cases also receive a Letter 1058 instead of an LT11.
What changes when a Revenue Officer is involved
Revenue Officers have a lot of discretion and a caseload to move. In our experience, cases with a Revenue Officer tend to involve:
- Firm deadlines, often set on Form 9297 (Summary of Taxpayer Contact), for providing financial statements, filing missing returns, or making deposits
- Detailed financial disclosure, usually Form 433-A (individuals) and/or Form 433-B (businesses), with bank statements, loan documents, and asset values
- Field visits to your home or business
- Summonses for records from you, your bank, or third parties if information isn't provided voluntarily
- Faster, more targeted levies after deadlines pass, including on business accounts and customer payments
- Trust fund recovery penalty investigations for unpaid payroll taxes, including Form 4180 interviews
None of this means the outcome will be bad. Revenue Officers can and do approve installment agreements, hardship status, and other resolutions. But they expect deadlines to be met and information to be complete.
Representation changes the dynamic. Once a Form 2848 power of attorney is on file, the Revenue Officer generally must work through your representative. You stop getting surprise calls and visits, and every deadline and document request comes to us.
Your 30-day hearing right
Within 30 days of the date on Letter 1058, you can request a Collection Due Process hearing on Form 12153. A timely request:
- Generally suspends levy action for the periods covered while the hearing is pending
- Moves the decision to the IRS Independent Office of Appeals, separate from the Revenue Officer
- Lets you propose a payment plan, hardship status, or an offer in compromise
- Preserves your right to petition the U.S. Tax Court if you disagree with the outcome
This can be especially valuable in Revenue Officer cases. If you and the Revenue Officer can't agree on reasonable terms, such as a monthly payment amount or whether an expense is allowable, a CDP hearing gives an independent Appeals officer the chance to weigh in.
If the 30 days have passed, you can still request an equivalent hearing within one year, but levies aren't automatically suspended and Tax Court review generally isn't available. You can also use the Collection Appeals Program for certain disputes with a Revenue Officer, such as a proposed levy or a rejected installment agreement.
Letter 1058 or a Revenue Officer visit? Get a representative in place this week.
Call (512) 222-9478What to do right now
- Note the date on the letter and count 30 days. That's your CDP deadline.
- Gather the letter, any Form 9297, and the Revenue Officer's contact information.
- Don't make promises you can't keep. Agreeing to an unrealistic deadline or payment amount on the spot can make things harder later.
- Don't move or hide assets. Revenue Officers look for that, and it can turn a civil collection case into something more serious.
- Call us. We file the power of attorney, contact the Revenue Officer, confirm deadlines, and decide whether to request a CDP hearing.
How we work a Revenue Officer case
We start by pulling transcripts for every year and tax type to make sure nothing is missing. Then we prepare the financial statement with you, carefully, because it's the foundation of any resolution and the IRS will verify it. We present the Revenue Officer with a specific, documented proposal: an installment agreement, currently not collectible status, or an offer in compromise where the numbers support it. For businesses, we make sure current deposits and filings are on track, because a Revenue Officer won't resolve old balances while new ones are building.
If you're already being levied, we request a release at the same time. See bank levy release and wage garnishment help.