Most people don't know the IRS has a real website where you can sign in and see your tax record. Not the public-facing irs.gov pages everyone uses to look up forms - a real account, behind a login, where you can see how much you owe, what payments you've made, your wage and income statements from last year, the notices you've been sent, and your tax transcripts. It's free, it works, and you can set one up in about 15 minutes if you have a smartphone and a government ID.
The IRS has three separate online portals - one for individuals, one for businesses, one for tax professionals. They look similar but they're not interchangeable. Each has its own sign-in URL, its own ID.me verification path, and its own scope of what you can see and do.
If you've ever spent two hours on the phone with the IRS trying to figure out whether your payment posted, or whether the notice they sent you is real, this is the answer. Once you're logged in, you can see in seconds:
You can also set up payment plans, make payments, and authorize a tax professional to access your account on your behalf - all without calling.
The IRS uses a third-party identity verification service called ID.me. You'll need it to sign in to any of the three accounts above. The verification is one-time - once your ID.me account is set up, you sign in to all three IRS portals (and many other government sites) with the same credentials.
You'll need:
The verification involves uploading a photo of your ID, taking a selfie that the system compares to the ID photo, confirming your phone number via SMS, and answering some background questions about your tax history. Most people get through it in 10 to 15 minutes.
The Individual Online Account is the one most people will use. After you sign in, you'll see a dashboard with current-year balance information and links to several sections.
Shows what you currently owe, broken out by tax year. Includes the assessed tax, accrued interest, and penalties. Updates within a few days of any payment posting.
Lists payments made for the past several years - estimated tax payments, payments with returns, scheduled installment plan payments. This is the fastest way to confirm a payment landed on the right account if you're not sure.
Five types of transcripts are downloadable as PDFs:
The Wage and Income transcript is particularly useful for people who lost or never received a W-2 or 1099. The IRS already has the information from the issuer, and you can pull it directly.
The notices the IRS has sent you, in PDF form. Useful if you've moved and notices are arriving at the wrong address (or not at all). You can also see notices that haven't yet hit your physical mailbox - the digital version typically appears in the account a few days before the paper version arrives.
You can review and approve power-of-attorney requests submitted by tax professionals through their Tax Pro Account. Faster than mailing or faxing Form 2848.
The Business Tax Account is newer and somewhat less complete than the individual account, but it's expanding. Currently you can:
Access is controlled at the entity level. A partnership can grant access to specific partners. A corporation grants access to authorized officers. The verification process is more involved than the individual account because the IRS needs to confirm both your identity and your authority to act for the entity.
If you're a tax professional with a PTIN, the Tax Pro Account lets you:
This is the practical replacement for the old "fax Form 2848 and wait two weeks" workflow. Once you and the client are both set up, the authorization can be approved in minutes.
This is a real problem for some Clients - particularly non-resident aliens with US tax obligations, Americans living abroad without a current US driver's license, or recent immigrants. The standard ID.me automated verification needs a US-issued photo ID.
If you don't have one, the options are:
The most common reasons people lose access to their IRS account:
The recovery path is through ID.me support (help.id.me), not the IRS directly. The IRS doesn't manage the identity verification - they just consume it from ID.me. If your ID.me account is broken, your IRS account access is broken until ID.me is fixed.
Phishing emails and fake "IRS account" sites are common. The genuine sign-in URLs are:
If a "sign in" link in an email goes anywhere else, it's not the IRS. Always type the URL directly or navigate from irs.gov rather than clicking email links. The IRS does not initiate contact by email asking you to sign in to your account.