What the IRS Charges to Set Up a Payment Plan or an Offer

One small table of IRS user fees and rules, copied from this section's payment plan and offer guides with the page each figure was read from: the IRS payment plans page and its Simple Payment Plans page for the setup fees and the online lines, the quarterly interest rate page, the failure-to-pay penalty page, the offer in compromise page, the Form 656-B booklet with its income table, and two sections of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. 6159 for the low-income user fee and 26 U.S.C. 7122 for the 20 percent lump-sum payment. Every figure was read on October 14, 2026.

Nothing in a result is a figure this estimator works out for itself. The setup fee, the application fee, the first payment rule, the online lines, the interest rate and the penalty rates are printed as the IRS states them. The only comparison it makes is between the balance you type into the form and the two dollar lines the IRS sets for online requests.

Paying in full and a short-term plan of up to 180 days carry no setup fee, however you make the request. For a long-term plan two of your answers set the fee: whether you apply online or by phone, mail or in person, and whether your monthly payment is drawn from a checking account by direct debit. That gives four fees, which can run from $29 to $178, and your result lists all four so the cheaper ways of setting up the same plan sit beside the one you picked.

An offer in compromise has one application fee, $205, and a first payment whose shape depends on the offer: with a lump-sum offer you send 20 percent of the amount offered with the application, and with a periodic offer you send the first monthly payment and keep paying while the IRS reviews it. Your state matters only here, because the income table that waives the fee has separate, higher rows for Alaska and Hawaii.

The plan rule and the offer rule are separate. For a long-term plan, if you are an individual whose adjusted gross income for the latest year is at or under 250 percent of the federal poverty level, you pay a reduced fee: $0 with direct debit, or $43 without it, which may be reimbursed once the plan is completed. The IRS applies the rule from its own records, and Form 13844 asks it to look again within 30 days of the acceptance letter.

For an offer, the test is the income table printed on Form 656, which compares adjusted gross income, or gross monthly household income times 12, with a figure for your household's size. In most states that figure is $39,900 for one person and $54,100 for two. If you are an individual at or under it, you send no fee and no payment with the offer, and your first payment falls due 30 days after the IRS accepts it. If you answer "Not sure", your result prints both the standard figure and the reduced one.

It does not total the interest or the penalty over the life of your plan, because both depend on your balance, your payment and the dates, and the interest rate changes each quarter; the payment plan guide works one month through as an example and labels it as its own arithmetic. It does not say whether your offer would be accepted. The IRS judges each offer against what it could collect, and its free Pre-Qualifier is where you can run that test.

It shows no fee for a preparer, an enrolled agent or an attorney, and no state tax agency plan, which has its own rules and fees. The state tax debt guide covers how state agencies collect and how their plans differ from the federal one.

The payment plan fees and the online lines are the ones on the IRS payment plans page, which the IRS updated on August 13, 2026. The offer fee, the first payment rules and the Form 656 income table come from the offer in compromise page and the April 2026 revision of Form 656-B. The interest rate is the federal short-term rate plus 3 percentage points and is reset every quarter, so it is the figure most likely to move: 7% a year for October to December 2026. When a fee or a table row changes, this tool and the two guides change together, so you see the same figure in all three.