EFTPS PIN by Mail: Which Address It Goes To and What to Do If It Never Arrives

Three ways a PIN reaches you

Not every business gets its PIN the same way. The EFTPS FAQ describes three paths. In only one of them can an agent read the PIN to you by phone.

Pre-enrolled new businesses come first. The FAQ says a new business that “indicated a likely federal tax deposit liability” when it applied for its EIN is pre-enrolled. That business “should have received a letter with your four-digit EFTPS® PIN.” If it did not, the FAQ says to call 1.800.555.4477, and the agent can give the PIN after you give your EIN. The FAQ says this is the only case where a PIN is given by phone. It gives the reason: “you haven’t yet added banking information to your enrollment.”

Businesses that enroll online are the second path. The FAQ says: “In five to seven days after you submit the enrollment, you’ll receive your PIN and enrollment number via U.S. Mail.”

Changing your bank account is the third path. The FAQ says you create an additional enrollment, and “you will self select a new EFTPS® PIN associated with the new financial institution account.” That PIN does not come in the mail.

How long to wait: we counted the official wording

We saved the EFTPS.gov and IRS pages and documents we read for this guide. A script pulled every sentence in them that gives a number of days for the PIN to arrive or for an enrollment to be processed. The script left out day counts for other steps, such as a later confirmation package and a bank account check. Six documents had such sentences, eight sentences in all. One of them is about calling to pay before the PIN arrives, so we left it out. The other seven give five different time frames: five to seven business days, five to seven days, seven business days, up to five business days, and five business days.

Two of these documents are old. Publication 4275 is dated October 2007, and it still tells readers how to order paper Federal Tax Deposit coupons. Publication 966 is dated March 2012. The current EFTPS.gov pages also differ from each other. The home page says five to seven business days, the FAQ says five to seven days, and the About EFTPS page says seven business days. The current EFTPS.gov pages we read do not say when to call if the letter is late. The 2007 Publication 4275 told pre-enrolled businesses to call if more than one week had passed since they received their EIN. If you enrolled online, we would call EFTPS once seven business days have passed with no letter. We took that number from the About EFTPS page. The letter may still be in the mail then, because the home page counts from IRS validation and the IRS page says processing can take up to five business days.

Third-party guides give their own numbers. The four we could open in the search results for this topic said up to 7 business days, about 7 business days, 5 to 7 business days, and seven to 10 days. One of them says the letter goes to “the address specified during registration.” EFTPS.gov says it goes to your IRS address of record.

What to do if the PIN letter never arrives

First, check which address the IRS has. The letter goes to that address, so it may be sitting at a former office or a former home. If you recently moved, look there before you call.

Then call EFTPS. The FAQ answer for “I can’t find my PIN” says: “Call 1.800.555.4477 and we’ll resend it to you by U.S. Mail.” The same answer says: “For security reasons, your PIN must be mailed; it can’t be given to you over the phone.” The EFTPS Contact Us page lists 1.303.967.5916 as a toll call for callers outside the United States.

One case is different. In the FAQ’s answer about enrolling, a pre-enrolled new business that never received its first PIN letter can call 1.800.555.4477, and the agent can give the PIN after you give your EIN.

If a tax payment is due before the letter arrives, you have an option. The FAQ says to call 1.800.555.4477 “two business days after completing your enrollment.” If your information matched IRS records, an agent can take your payment. The agent still cannot give you the PIN.

If EFTPS rejects your enrollment, the problem may be your name or EIN. The EFTPS Contact Us page lists the IRS e-help Desk at 1.866.255.0654 for “rejected registrations dealing with social security/employer identification number and name mismatch.”

When the IRS has your old address

EFTPS cannot change the address. The FAQ says: “Businesses: To change an address, name, or EIN, contact the IRS at 1.800.829.4933.” It adds: “Please note you cannot make these changes at EFTPS®.”

The IRS address change FAQ lists four ways to tell the IRS. You can file Form 8822-B, use the new address on your tax return, mail a signed written statement, or tell the IRS in person or by phone. A written statement needs your full name, old and new addresses, and your SSN, individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN), or EIN. The same FAQ says that changing your address with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) “may update your address of record” through the National Change of Address database.

Timing matters for the PIN. The IRS address change FAQ says: “It can generally take four to six weeks after receipt for a change of address request to fully process.” Form 8822-B gives the same range: “Generally, it takes 4 to 6 weeks to process your address or responsible party change.”

Here is the order we would use. First, change the address with the IRS. Second, wait for the change to process. In our reading, Notice 148A at the new address is a sign that the change has been processed. Third, call EFTPS and ask for the PIN to be resent. None of the pages we read describes this order. This order is our reading of the EFTPS and IRS pages together.

The IRS page on Notice CP148A explains that notice. The page says the IRS changes a business mailing address when it receives “an employment tax return or Form 8822-B” with a new address. The IRS then sends Notice 148A to the new address and 148B to the former one “to confirm the address change.”

Our guide to Form 8822-B walks through the form line by line. We would use the same order for other IRS letters that are mailed to the address on file, such as the 147C EIN verification letter.

What Form 8822-B asks for

We read both pages of Form 8822-B (Rev. December 2019). The About Form 8822-B page on IRS.gov lists this revision as current. The form has lines numbered 1 to 10, and line 4 has two parts, 4a and 4b. Three lines hold addresses: line 5 is the old mailing address, line 6 is the new mailing address, and line 7 is the new business location.

The mailing address and the business location are separate lines. The form’s instructions say it is used if you changed “your business mailing address, your business location, or the identity of your responsible party.” The PIN letter is mail, and our reading is that the mailing address line is the one that controls it. The EFTPS pages we read do not name a Form 8822-B line.

Two more instructions matter for a mailing address. For a P.O. box, the form says: “Enter your box number instead of your street address only if your post office does not deliver mail to your street address.” For mail handled by someone else, it says: “If you receive your mail in care of a third party (such as an accountant or attorney), enter ‘C/O’ followed by the third party’s name and street address or P.O. box.” For a foreign address, the instructions say: “Follow the country’s practice for entering the postal code. Please do not abbreviate the country name.” The form does not use the words virtual, mail forwarding, or mailbox. So it does not answer whether such an address fits line 6. If you are unsure, ask the IRS at 1.800.829.4933.

The form goes to one of two IRS addresses. You choose by the state of your old business address: Internal Revenue Service, Kansas City, MO 64999, or Internal Revenue Service, Ogden, UT 84201-0023. The Ogden list also includes “any place outside the United States.”

Choosing the mailing address for your IRS record

The PIN letter only helps if someone at that address opens the company’s mail and you see it in time. The same is true for other IRS letters. Form 8822-B says that if you do not give the IRS your current mailing address, “you may not receive a notice of deficiency or a notice of demand for tax.” It adds that penalties and interest “will continue to accrue” even if those notices do not reach you.

IRS Publication 966 (Rev. 03-2012) says a taxpayer located outside the United States can enroll in EFTPS with a U.S. banking account. That publication is from 2012, so check with EFTPS that it still applies. The EFTPS pages we read do not say whether a PIN letter is mailed outside the United States. Ask EFTPS at 1.303.967.5916 before you rely on a foreign address for the letter.

Before you put a new address on Form 8822-B, our free address checker shows its USPS classification as Commercial, Residential or Unknown. The checker also shows whether USPS data flags the address as a commercial mail receiving agency (CMRA). The checker does not test for P.O. boxes. Our guide on how to tell if an address is a P.O. Box covers that question.

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