IRC 7345: Passport Denial and Revocation for Tax Debt

The IRS cannot take your passport directly, but it can trigger passport denial for tax debt by certifying you to the State Department once your assessed federal tax liability passes $66,000 for 2026 and the agency has already filed a lien or issued a levy against you. Once that certification lands, the State Department will refuse to issue or renew your passport, and it has discretion to revoke the one you already hold. The rule comes from IRC 7345, added by the FAST Act in 2015, and it has surprised a lot of taxpayers who thought a tax bill and a passport were unrelated.

When the IRS Can Certify Your Debt

Two conditions have to line up. First, your total unpaid federal tax, including assessed penalties and interest, must exceed the inflation-adjusted threshold. The base figure in the statute is $50,000; for 2026 the threshold is $66,000.¹

Second, the IRS must have taken concrete collection action. Either it filed a Notice of Federal Tax Lien and your administrative appeal rights have run out or been exhausted, or it issued an actual levy against your property or income.² A warning letter that a levy might happen is not enough. If you owe over the threshold but no lien has been filed and no levy has actually been executed, your debt does not yet qualify for certification.

Situations That Block Certification

Even with a large balance and active collection, several situations keep the IRS from certifying you. Some are written into the statute and apply automatically; others are IRS policy choices the agency has published in its Internal Revenue Manual.

Statutory Protections

IRC 7345 itself carves out four situations where the IRS cannot certify:

You are making timely payments under an IRS-approved installment agreement.
You have a pending or accepted offer in compromise.
You have timely requested or are waiting on a Collection Due Process hearing related to a levy.
You have made an election or requested relief under the innocent spouse provisions of IRC 6015.

These protections are mandatory. If any of them is in place, the IRS is barred from certifying the debt regardless of the amount.²

Administrative Exclusions

The IRS has also decided, as a matter of policy, not to certify taxpayers who fall into any of these categories:

Currently-not-collectible status due to financial hardship
In bankruptcy
Identified as a victim of tax-related identity theft
Located in a federally declared disaster area
Has a pending (not yet approved) request for an installment agreement or offer in compromise
Has an IRS-accepted adjustment that will fully satisfy the debt

The IRS applies these uniformly, so a case-worker cannot override them.¹ Because they are policy rather than statute, the IRS could change them in the future.

What Happens After Certification

When the IRS certifies your debt, it sends the certification through Treasury to the Secretary of State. The IRS itself does not deny or revoke anything.³

You will receive Notice CP508C by regular mail at your last known address. The notice states the amount owed, explains what certification means for your passport, and lists a phone number for disputes.⁴ If you have moved without updating your address with the IRS, you may not learn about the certification until you try to travel. Keep your address current.

New Applications and Renewals

For a passport application or renewal, 22 USC 2714a is mandatory: the State Department “shall not issue” a passport to anyone with certified seriously delinquent tax debt, outside of emergency or humanitarian cases.⁵ In practice, the State Department holds your application open for 90 days first, giving you time to resolve the debt or set up a payment arrangement. If nothing changes in that window, the application is denied and closed, and you would need to start over.¹

Existing Passports

For a passport you already hold, revocation is discretionary. The statute says the State Department “may revoke” it, so there is room for judgment rather than a required outcome.⁵ A revoked passport is invalid for international travel. The State Department notifies you in writing before or at the time of the revocation.⁴

If You Are Abroad

If your passport is revoked while you are outside the U.S., the State Department may issue a limited-validity passport good only for direct return. It is valid solely for transit back to the U.S. and expires shortly after enough time has passed to complete that trip.⁶ The State Department can also issue a passport in a genuine emergency or humanitarian case despite an active certification, but that exception is narrow.⁵

How to Get Your Passport Back

The only path back is IRS decertification. Your debt has to fall below the threshold, be paid off, become legally unenforceable, or move into one of the protected categories. Any of these routes will do it:

Pay the balance in full, including penalties and interest. Once the account is satisfied, the IRS has to begin decertifying.
Enter an approved installment agreement. An accepted agreement immediately pulls your debt out of seriously delinquent status. Even a pending request does the same under current IRS policy.
Submit an offer in compromise. Pending or accepted, either removes the debt from certified status.
Obtain innocent spouse relief. A successful IRC 6015 claim decertifies the underlying liability.
File a timely Collection Due Process hearing request. It suspends the collection action that made certification possible.

Once the IRS decides the debt is no longer seriously delinquent, it must notify the State Department within 30 days.⁷ After the State Department processes that notice, it removes the certification and lifts the hold.⁵ The State Department side can add a few weeks depending on backlog. If travel is imminent, ask the IRS for a copy of the decertification notice and take it to the State Department yourself; that can shorten the wait.

If the Certification Is Wrong

Certifications are sometimes made in error. On the administrative side, call the number on your CP508C to dispute it. Typical grounds include a balance that is actually below $66,000, one of the statutory or policy exceptions that the IRS overlooked, or a debt that belongs to someone else.⁴

If the administrative route fails, IRC 7345(e) lets you file a civil action in either a U.S. district court or the U.S. Tax Court. You can challenge the certification itself, or the IRS’s failure to reverse one that should have been reversed. Whichever court gets the case first has sole jurisdiction, so you cannot file in both.³ If the court agrees the certification was wrong, it can order the IRS to notify the State Department to remove it.

Court is most useful when the IRS disagrees with your position: you say your installment agreement is in good standing and the IRS says you defaulted, or you dispute the underlying tax. A judge can make a binding determination. The statute sets no specific filing deadline, but delay weakens your case and leaves the passport restriction in place.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Revocation or Denial of Passport in Cases of Certain Unpaid Taxes
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 7345 – Revocation or Denial of Passport in Case of Certain Tax Delinquencies
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 7345 – Revocation or Denial of Passport in Case of Certain Tax Delinquencies
4
Internal Revenue Service. Understanding Your CP508C Notice
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 22 USC 2714a – Revocation or Denial of Passport in Case of Certain Unpaid Taxes
6
U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual. 8 FAM 1303.2 – U.S. Passports Limited for Direct Return to the United States
7
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 5827 – Understanding Your IRS Debt and Passport Certification