IRS Form 433-A: When to File, Sections, and Submission

IRS Form 433-A, the Collection Information Statement for Wage Earners and Self-Employed Individuals, is a detailed financial disclosure the IRS uses to decide how much you can afford to pay on a tax debt. It captures your income, expenses, assets, and liabilities in one place. The numbers you report drive everything that follows: your monthly installment amount, whether you qualify for a settlement, or whether the IRS agrees you can’t pay anything at all right now.

When You Need to File Form 433-A

You won’t see this form during a normal tax filing. It only appears once you owe back taxes and are asking the IRS for some kind of collection relief. Four situations trigger it:

You’re proposing an Offer in Compromise to settle for less than you owe. Federal law authorizes these settlements under 26 U.S.C. § 7122, but you have to show the IRS would collect less through normal enforcement than what you’re offering. For an OIC you file a separate version, Form 433-A (OIC), not the standard 433-A.
You’re asking to be placed in Currently Not Collectible status, meaning the IRS pauses levies and garnishments because you can’t cover basic living expenses and pay your tax debt at the same time.
You want a Partial Payment Installment Agreement, where your monthly payments won’t cover the full balance before the collection deadline expires.
You need a non-streamlined installment agreement, typically for larger debts where the simplified payment plans don’t apply.

Sole proprietors and wage earners use Form 433-A. Corporations, partnerships, and LLCs taxed as corporations file Form 433-B instead.¹ Ignoring an IRS request for the form means your relief application gets denied and the agency can move ahead with a federal tax lien or wage levy.²

Which 433 Form You Actually Need

The IRS has three financial disclosure forms with confusingly similar names, and using the wrong one can stall your case for months.

The full Form 433-A is the six-page version for Currently Not Collectible requests, partial payment installment agreements, and other non-OIC collection situations. It requires extensive supporting documentation.

Form 433-A (OIC) is used only with an Offer in Compromise. It collects similar financial data but adds a section where you calculate your minimum offer amount from your remaining monthly income and asset equity.³ The form itself states it “should only be used with the Form 656, Offer in Compromise.”

Form 433-F is a shorter, two-page collection information statement. The IRS may accept it for routine installment agreement requests where less intensive review is enough.⁴ If you’re working with a Revenue Officer or requesting CNC status, expect to complete the full Form 433-A.

Documents to Gather Before You Start

Pull your records together before opening the form. The IRS instructions call for at least the prior three months of financial data to establish typical patterns, and self-employed taxpayers may need up to twelve months to capture seasonal swings.⁵ At minimum, have:

The three most recent months of personal bank statements. If you own a business, six months of statements for each business account.³
Current pay stubs from every employer in your household.
A current profit and loss statement if you’re self-employed.
Real estate documentation: recent appraisals, tax assessments, or comparable sales for fair market value, plus mortgage statements showing your current loan balance.
Year, make, model, and mileage for every vehicle, plus loan payoff amounts.
Current balances for 401(k) plans, IRAs, and brokerage accounts.
Any whole life or universal life policy with a cash surrender value.

If you own real property, the IRS values it at “quick sale value,” which is 80% of fair market value minus any outstanding mortgage balance.⁶ A professional appraisal helps if you believe the IRS is overvaluing your home.

Filling Out the Form, Section by Section

Personal and Household Information

The first section captures your Social Security number, date of birth, and contact details. It also asks you to list everyone else living in your household or claimed as a dependent, including ages and relationships.⁵ Household size directly affects how much the IRS allows for living expenses, so accuracy here matters.

Employment and Income

Wage earners enter employer name and address, pay frequency, and gross wages. The IRS will cross-check what you report against W-2 and 1099 records, so the figures must match.⁵ List every income source: wages, Social Security, pensions, rental income, anything coming in each month.

Assets

You list bank accounts with current balances, vehicles at their trade-in value, real property with equity calculations, and retirement accounts at liquidation value. For retirement accounts, the IRS wants the amount you’d actually receive if you cashed out today, accounting for early withdrawal penalties and tax withholding.⁵ Cash-value life insurance counts as accessible equity too.

Monthly Expenses and Net Difference

The final sections tally your monthly living expenses and calculate your “net difference,” which is what the IRS treats as your remaining monthly disposable income. This is the number that drives everything. You get to it by subtracting total allowable expenses from total gross monthly income.⁵ For an installment agreement, this figure essentially becomes your monthly payment.

How the IRS Decides What You Can Afford

The IRS doesn’t just accept your reported spending. It applies standardized expense allowances called Collection Financial Standards, and they often differ from what you actually spend.

National Standards cover food, clothing, housekeeping supplies, personal care, and miscellaneous items. The IRS allows a fixed amount based on household size regardless of your actual spending. For 2025, effective through June 2026, a single person gets $839 per month across these categories, and a four-person household gets $2,129.⁷ Separate per-person allowances apply to out-of-pocket healthcare.

Local Standards cover housing, utilities, and transportation, and vary by county and state. Housing allowances include mortgage or rent, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, gas, electric, water, phone, internet, and cable.⁷

Some personal expenses are generally disallowed unless you can show they’re necessary for health or income production: private school tuition, college expenses, charitable contributions, voluntary retirement contributions, and payments on unsecured debts like credit cards.⁵ One important exception: the IRS “six-year rule” allows expenses above the standards, including minimum payments on student loans and credit cards, if your full tax liability will be paid within six years.⁷

Self-Employment Income and Expenses

If you’re a sole proprietor, Section 7 captures business income and expenses separately from personal living costs. Allowable business expenses include materials, inventory, wages paid to employees, rent, supplies, utilities, vehicle fuel, repairs, insurance, and current taxes.⁵ Your net business income (gross receipts minus expenses) then flows into the personal income section.

One detail that catches self-employed filers off guard: depreciation and depletion aren’t cash expenses, so the IRS adds them back to your net income. If your Schedule C shows low profit partly because of large depreciation deductions, your Form 433-A income will be higher than what your tax return reflects.

Where to Submit the Form

Where the completed form goes depends on your situation and which version you’re filing.

If a Revenue Officer has been assigned to your case, deliver the signed form directly to that officer at the field office.
For an Offer in Compromise, Form 433-A (OIC) is submitted as part of a package with Form 656, the $205 application fee, and an initial payment. Lump-sum offers of five or fewer payments require 20% of the offer amount upfront; periodic payment offers require the first proposed installment. Send the whole package to the IRS Centralized Offer in Compromise unit by certified mail.⁸⁹
For Currently Not Collectible requests or installment agreements, the standard Form 433-A goes to the IRS collection unit handling your case, or by fax to the number listed in your notice.

If you meet the low-income certification guidelines based on adjusted gross income and family size, the $205 application fee and initial payment are waived for an Offer in Compromise.¹⁰ The income thresholds appear in Form 656.

You sign under penalties of perjury, certifying the information is true, correct, and complete.⁵ Expect the IRS to follow up with requests for additional documentation.

What Happens After You File

Offer in Compromise

The IRS has 24 months from the date it receives your offer to decide. If you don’t get a written decision within that window, your offer is automatically accepted by law.¹¹ Reviews typically run several months, and the IRS may request updated financial information along the way.

Currently Not Collectible

If CNC status is granted, active enforcement stops. No levies, no garnishments. But the debt doesn’t disappear. Interest and penalties keep accruing.¹² The IRS also reviews your income annually, and improved finances can pull you back out of CNC and restart collection.¹³

Partial Payment Installment Agreement

For a PPIA, the IRS must first determine that your full liability can’t be collected before the collection deadline expires and that you have some ability to pay. It will look at whether you have asset equity that should be tapped first. All PPIAs require managerial approval after a thorough review of your financial statement.¹⁴

Consequences of Inaccurate or Fraudulent Information

Understating income or hiding assets on Form 433-A carries real consequences. The form is signed under penalty of perjury, and the IRS cross-references what you report against bank records, employer filings, and property records.

On the civil side, if the IRS finds that any portion of an underpayment is due to fraud, it can impose a penalty equal to 75% of the fraudulent amount.¹⁵ Criminally, filing a fraudulent financial statement is a felony under 26 U.S.C. § 7206, carrying up to three years in prison and fines up to $100,000.¹⁶ The IRS doesn’t prosecute every inaccuracy, but omitting a bank account or inflating expenses to manipulate the disposable income calculation is exactly the sort of conduct that draws scrutiny.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Collection Information Statement for Businesses
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6331 – Levy and Distraint
3
Internal Revenue Service. Form 433-A (OIC) (Rev. 4-2025)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Collection Information Statement
5
Internal Revenue Service. Collection Information Statement for Wage Earners and Self-Employed Individuals
6
Internal Revenue Service. Offer in Compromise (OIC) Disagreed Items
7
Internal Revenue Service. Collection Financial Standards
8
Internal Revenue Service. Offer in Compromise
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S.C. 7122 – Compromises
10
Internal Revenue Service. Offer in Compromise FAQs
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 656 (Rev. 4-2025) Offer in Compromise
12
Internal Revenue Service. Temporarily Delay the Collection Process
13
Taxpayer Advocate Service. Currently Not Collectible (CNC)
14
Internal Revenue Service. 5.14.2 Partial Payment Installment Agreements and the Collection Statute Expiration Date (CSED)
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6663 – Imposition of Fraud Penalty
16
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 7206 – Fraud and False Statements