What Is IRS Form 8822-B? Responsible Party, Filing, and Penalties

IRS Form 8822-B is the form a business or other entity with an Employer Identification Number uses to tell the IRS about a new mailing address, a new physical business location, or a new responsible party.¹ Corporations, partnerships, LLCs, trusts, estates, and tax-exempt organizations all use the same form. Filing it keeps IRS notices, refund checks, and legal correspondence flowing to the right people at the right address.

What the Form Reports

Form 8822-B covers three separate updates, and you can report one, two, or all three on a single filing:

A new mailing address, meaning where the IRS should send correspondence and checks. This is often a P.O. box or billing office.
A new business location, meaning the physical place where the entity actually operates. If the office moves but the mailing address stays the same, update the location anyway.
A new responsible party, meaning the individual who controls or manages the entity’s funds and assets.

Reporting an address change on this form is voluntary. Reporting a change in the responsible party is not — it must be done within 60 days of the change.²

Who Counts as the Responsible Party

The responsible party is the individual who owns, controls, or exercises effective control over the entity and directly or indirectly manages its funds and assets.³ It has to be an actual person, not another company. Government entities are the only exception. For a corporation or tax-exempt organization, this is the principal officer; for a partnership, a general partner; for a trust, the grantor, owner, or trustor; for an estate, the executor or other fiduciary. If several people share that authority, the entity picks one to list.

A nominee — someone with limited authority during formation, like an attorney handling paperwork — should never be listed as the responsible party. If a nominee ended up on the EIN application by mistake, Form 8822-B is how you fix it. Leaving the wrong person on file can expose the entity’s tax information to someone who no longer has any right to see it.³

How to Complete the Form

Download the current version from irs.gov. The main entries are:

Line 4a: full legal name of the business
Line 4b: the nine-digit EIN
Line 5: old mailing address
Line 6: new mailing address
Line 7: new business location, if it changed
Line 8: new responsible party’s name, if it changed
Line 9: new responsible party’s SSN, ITIN, or EIN

Lines 8 and 9 need to match, because that is how the IRS ties a specific individual to the entity’s tax record.²

If the new address is outside the United States, complete the foreign country, province or county, and postal code fields. Write the country name out in full rather than abbreviating, and use that country’s format for the postal code.²

Someone with legal authority to bind the entity has to sign: an officer, owner, general partner, LLC member-manager, plan administrator, fiduciary, or authorized representative. The signer prints their title, dates the form, and signs under penalty of perjury.²

Where to Send It

The form has to go in the mail on paper. There is no electronic filing option and no filing fee. Which service center handles it depends on the state of the old address:⁴

Send to the IRS in Kansas City, MO 64999 if the old address was in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, or Wisconsin.
Send to the IRS in Ogden, UT 84201 for old addresses in any other state.

Processing generally takes four to six weeks.² During that window, IRS mail may still go to the old address, so watch both if you can.

What Happens If You Don’t File

There is no direct penalty for skipping Form 8822-B. The IRS does warn, though, that if you fail to give a current mailing address or identify the responsible party, you may miss critical notices, and penalties and interest keep running on any tax deficiency regardless.²

The sharpest consequence involves the Notice of Deficiency. The IRS mails that notice to your “last known address,” which is normally the address on your most recently filed and processed return unless you have told the IRS otherwise. Once the notice is properly mailed there, you have 90 days to petition the Tax Court, and that clock runs whether or not you actually received the letter.⁵

Refunds can also go astray. A check sent to a former address takes extra time and paperwork to recover.⁶ And a former responsible party who stays on file may keep receiving confidential tax information about the entity.³

Not the Same as Form 8822

Form 8822-B is for entities with an EIN. Form 8822 is for individuals updating a personal home address tied to their individual return.¹ A sole proprietor who files business taxes under a Social Security Number rather than an EIN uses Form 8822 for an address change. If both a home and a business address have changed, both forms may need to be filed.

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Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8822-B, Change of Address or Responsible Party – Business
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 8822-B, Change of Address or Responsible Party — Business
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Internal Revenue Service. Responsible Parties and Nominees
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Internal Revenue Service. Where to File Form 8822-B
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6212 – Notice of Deficiency
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Taxpayer Advocate Service. Report Address Changes to Ensure You Receive IRS Correspondence and Your Refund