ITIN Application Rejected: What CP566 and CP567 Mean, and What Happens to Your Tax Return

CP565, CP566, and CP567, side by side

The IRS publishes a plain-language page for each of these three notices, and the descriptions are short enough to quote. The CP565 page says: 'We gave you an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN).' The CP566 page says: 'We need more information to process your application for an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN).' The CP567 page says: 'We rejected your application for an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN).'

CP566: a 45-day clock, and what happens when it runs out

A CP566 is the recoverable outcome. The IRS is telling you the application is incomplete, and the page names the usual reasons in two short sentences: 'You may have sent us an incomplete form. You may have sent us the wrong documents.'

The deadline is explicit: 'You have 45 days from the date of your notice to reply.' The clock starts on the date printed on the notice, and the notice reaches you by mail, so an applicant reading the letter abroad may find two or three weeks of the window already lost to transit.

The page also states what happens if you let the clock run out: 'We will reject your application. You'll have to submit a new application for an ITIN.' A missed CP566 does not stay open. It becomes a CP567, and the fix moves from sending a correction to starting over.

So the reply to a CP566 is narrow: read what the notice says is missing or wrong, and send that. If the notice says the form was incomplete, the fix is the corrected form. If it says the documents were wrong, the fix is documents that meet the rules covered in the document rules section below.

CP567: the path forward is a new application

A CP567 closes the file. The page says plainly: 'We rejected your application for an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN). You may not be eligible for an ITIN.'

If you believe you are eligible and the rejection came from a fixable defect, the notice page describes one path, and it is a fresh start: 'Send us a new application. Fill it out completely. Answer all the questions. Attach the correct documents.' The page describes no procedure for amending the first application, so the working assumption is that nothing from the rejected file carries over.

The notice page prints no deadline for sending the new application. That said, the tax return question in the next section is a reason to move quickly rather than slowly.

What happens to the tax return you attached

Most first-time ITIN applications travel stapled to a federal tax return, because the W-7 rules require a return unless you qualify for an exception. So when the application is rejected, the natural fear is that the return was rejected with it.

The IRS answers this directly, and the same two sentences appear on both the CP566 and CP567 pages: 'We'll process your return without an ITIN. You'll need to reapply for an ITIN and attach a copy of the return to your application to get a refund.'

Read them twice, because the two sentences point in opposite directions. The first is reassuring: the return you filed is not void. The IRS processes it without the number. The second is the part applicants miss: if that return claims a refund, the refund is tied to the reapplication. The instruction is to file a new W-7 and attach a copy of the same return to it.

The notice pages stop there. They do not say how long a refund waits or what the processing looks like internally, so we will not guess at it either. What the published text supports is a clear action: keep a complete copy of the return you filed, because the reapplication needs it.

The document rules the notices point back to

When a notice says the documents were wrong, these are the rules it is pointing at. Three of them do the damage.

First, the certification rule. The ITIN documents page says submissions must 'be original documents or certified copies,' and the W-7 instructions specify that a certified copy comes from the issuing agency, meaning the government office that issued the passport or record. The documents page adds: 'We don't accept notarized documents.' A notary stamp from a local office is an easy substitute to reach for, and it does not meet the rule. Both pages carve out one narrow accommodation: dependents and spouses of U.S. military personnel applying from an overseas or APO/FPO address may submit notarized copies, and that is the only such carve-out they describe.

Second, the stand-alone rule. The documents page says: 'A passport is the only stand-alone document.' Everything else on the 13-item list works only in combination, because the combination must prove both identity and foreign status.

Third, a trap that applies to dependents: the instructions say a passport without a date of entry into the United States is no longer accepted as a stand-alone document for a dependent, unless the dependent is a dependent of U.S. military personnel stationed overseas, or is from Canada or Mexico and claimed for a tax benefit other than the credit for other dependents. Primary and secondary applicants are outside this rule, but a parent applying for a child with a never-used passport walks straight into it.

Rejected through a CAA: the spouse and dependent mix-up

A Certifying Acceptance Agent exists to keep your original passport out of the mail. The W-7 instructions describe the authority precisely: 'A CAA can verify original documentation and certified copies of the documentation from the issuing agency for primary and secondary applicants and their dependents, except for foreign military identification cards. For dependents, CAAs can only verify passports and birth certificates.'

The last sentence is where the mix-up starts. The tighter limit, passports and birth certificates only, applies to dependents. A spouse filing jointly is not a dependent. The instructions say it flatly: 'Your spouse is never considered your dependent.' On a joint return, the spouse is the secondary applicant, and for secondary applicants the CAA can verify the full range the instructions allow.

So a rejection on a spouse's application that arrived despite using a CAA is unlikely to mean the CAA route itself was invalid. The likelier reads are the ones the notices name: a document that was not an original or an issuing-agency certified copy, a form defect, or a certification that did not reach the IRS in the required shape. The fix runs through the same CP566 or CP567 logic as any other application, with the CAA able to certify the secondary applicant's documents on the retry.

One more line from the instructions is worth knowing before you choose the route again: 'The CAA will return the documentation immediately after reviewing its authenticity.' The passport staying in your hands is the design, and it removes the 60-day mail return described in the next section from the equation entirely.

Reapplying: the clocks that apply to round two

A reapplication is a new W-7, so it rides the standard processing timeline. The IRS states it in two sentences on its how-to-apply page: 'Allow 7 weeks for us to notify you about your ITIN application status. It can take 9-11 weeks if it's tax season (January 15 to April 30) or if you applied from overseas.'

Look at the second condition. The longer window applies during tax season or for overseas filers, so an applicant mailing a W-7 from outside the United States is in the 9 to 11 week lane year round. Planning a bank application or a filing deadline around 7 weeks is planning around the wrong number for most non-resident founders.

If you mailed original documents, the return trip has its own published clock. The CP565 and CP567 pages both say the IRS will return your documents within 60 days of the notice date, and the W-7 instructions say that if the originals have not come back within 60 days you can call the IRS: 800-829-1040 from inside the United States, or 267-941-1000 from abroad.

The whole process runs on postal mail

Every stage of this sequence arrives in an envelope. The W-7 instructions say of the address you enter on line 2: 'This is the address the IRS will use to return your original documents and send written notification of your ITIN application status.' The assignment, the 45-day demand, the rejection, and your passport all travel to that one line.

The IRS also tells you what it will not do. Its guidance on recognizing legitimate contact says the agency normally makes first contact by mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, and that it emails only when you opt in. An email announcing your ITIN was rejected, with a link to fix it, is a phishing pattern, and the real answer is sitting in the mail.

That design has a practical consequence for applicants outside the United States. The CP566 clock runs from the notice date, so every day the letter spends crossing borders is a day subtracted from your 45. In this process, a mailing address where letters are received, opened, and seen quickly is the difference between a correction and a restart.

This is the part of the process where the address on line 2 deserves real thought. Some applicants use the address of a trusted contact in the United States. Some use a virtual address service that receives the mail and shows them what arrived. Whatever you choose, choose it before filing the new W-7, because changing the address mid-process is one more thing that can go wrong. If you are weighing that option while restarting an application, our guide to the ITIN application for non-resident LLC owners covers where the address fits in the larger setup.