What is the seriously delinquent tax debt amount for 2026?

For calendar year 2026 it is $66,000. The debt must be more than that amount, measured as the assessed, unpaid balance of tax, penalties and interest. The figure comes from Rev. Proc. 2025-32 and is adjusted for inflation every year from a $50,000 base in IRC 7345.

Does accrued interest count toward the passport threshold?

No. IRM 5.19.25.3 says the threshold is the aggregate unpaid balance of assessment, which includes assessed tax, penalties and interest but not accrued interest and penalties that have not yet been assessed.

Can state tax debt get my passport certified?

No. IRC 7345 applies to federal tax liabilities. State income tax debts, child support and similar obligations are not part of the federal certification test.

If I pay my balance below $66,000, will the certification go away?

Not by itself. Once you are certified, paying below the threshold does not reverse it. Every certified period must be paid in full, become unenforceable, or fall into an exclusion such as an installment agreement, accepted offer, or hardship status. See reversing a passport certification.

Seriously Delinquent Tax Debt: The 2026 Passport Threshold

Most people learn the phrase "seriously delinquent tax debt" the hard way. They apply to renew a passport, and a letter comes back from the State Department instead of a passport book. Or a CP508C shows up in the mailbox and they have no idea why the IRS is talking about travel documents.

The phrase comes from Internal Revenue Code section 7345, which Congress added in December 2015 as part of the FAST Act. It is a defined term. That matters, because a defined term has edges. If your debt falls outside the definition, the IRS has no business certifying you, and if it falls inside, there are specific ways to move it back out.

Let's walk through the definition piece by piece.

The four parts of the definition

Under IRC 7345(b)(1), a seriously delinquent tax debt is an unpaid, legally enforceable federal tax liability of an individual that meets three more conditions. All of them have to be true at the same time:

It has been assessed. A proposed audit adjustment, a notice of deficiency you are still fighting, or a return the IRS has not processed yet is not an assessment.
It is greater than $50,000, adjusted for inflation. For calendar year 2026 the adjusted figure is $66,000, so the debt must be more than $66,000.
Either a Notice of Federal Tax Lien has been filed and your Collection Due Process rights for that lien have been exhausted or have lapsed, or the IRS has made a levy under IRC 6331.
It is unpaid and legally enforceable. A debt past the collection statute expiration date, or one that has been paid, does not qualify.

The $66,000 figure for 2026 comes from Rev. Proc. 2025-32, section 4.60, and the IRS passport page lists the same number. The statute itself still says $50,000. The inflation adjustment in IRC 7345(f) moves the number each year and rounds it to the nearest $1,000.

Notice what the definition does not include. It does not care about how many years you owe for, whether you are working with the IRS on an audit for a different year, or how much you owe a state. It is a federal tax test with a federal tax number.

What gets added up to reach $66,000

The Internal Revenue Manual explains the math in IRM 5.19.25.3. The threshold is measured against the aggregate unpaid balance of assessment across your account. That balance includes assessed tax, assessed penalties and assessed interest. It does not include interest and penalties that have accrued but have not yet been assessed.

That last point surprises people. The balance on an IRS payoff letter usually includes accruals through a future date. The certification test uses the assessed balance, which can be noticeably lower. If you are close to the line, the difference matters, and your account transcripts show it.

The IRS also aggregates across tax identification numbers. IRM 5.19.25.8 says both individual and business accounts may be used to determine whether the taxpayer meets the threshold. In practice that means individual income tax, trust fund recovery penalties assessed against you personally, business taxes you are personally liable for, and other civil penalties assessed under your number can all count. There is a separate page on business taxes and the trust fund recovery penalty because that combination catches a lot of business owners.

What never counts toward the threshold

IRM 5.19.25.3 lists liabilities that are not tax debt for passport purposes, even when the IRS is the one collecting them:

Affordable Care Act individual shared responsibility payments
Employer shared responsibility payments
Criminal restitution assessments
Child support obligations
FBAR penalties, which are assessed under Title 31 and tracked outside the normal IRS account system

The IRS passport page and IRM 5.19.25.4 also exclude debt that is being paid on time under a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice.

The trigger: a filed lien or a levy

Owing $70,000 is not enough by itself. The IRS also needs one of two collection events.

The first is a filed Notice of Federal Tax Lien with your hearing rights finished. When the IRS files a lien notice, IRC 6320 gives you the right to request a Collection Due Process hearing. Until the window to request that hearing closes, or until a timely hearing and any appeals are over, the lien prong is not satisfied. IRM 5.19.25.3 says that plainly. It also says that an equivalent hearing, the late version you can request after the CDP window closes, does not stop the clock.

The second is a levy. Any levy under IRC 6331 counts, and the IRS marks the account the first time a tax period is included in a levy. IRM 5.19.25.6 describes a short delay built into that marking. If you received post-levy CDP rights, the levy indicator is held for eight weeks so you have time to appeal. A state tax refund levy under the State Income Tax Levy Program is not treated as a levy for passport purposes until the CDP notice for it has been issued.

This is where timing becomes strategy. A taxpayer who responds to a lien notice with a timely CDP request keeps the lien prong from completing while the hearing is pending. That is not a stall tactic. It is a hearing the Code gives you, and it is often the right forum to propose an installment agreement or an offer anyway.

Paying it down below $66,000 does not undo a certification

Here is the part most people miss. The threshold decides whether you can be certified. It does not decide whether you stay certified.

IRM 5.19.25.3 contains a caution: once a taxpayer is properly certified, paying the account below the threshold that applied at the time of certification will not result in decertification. The certification only reverses when every certified tax period is fully paid, becomes legally unenforceable, or falls into one of the statutory or discretionary exclusions.

So if you owe $75,000, are certified, and send the IRS $20,000, you are still certified. That money may have been better spent as the first payment on an installment agreement that reverses the certification under IRC 7345(c). The exits are covered in detail in how to reverse a passport certification.

There is one narrow exception the IRM recognizes. If an adjustment reduces the original assessment itself, such as penalty abatement, an audit reconsideration, or an original return that replaces a substitute for return, and that adjustment drops the aggregate below the threshold, the IRS treats that as grounds for decertification. A payment is not an adjustment. An abatement is.

A worked example

Suppose your transcripts show three years of balances: $31,000, $22,000 and $16,500 of assessed tax, penalty and interest. That is $69,500 in assessed balance, which is more than $66,000. The IRS filed a lien notice last year and you never requested a hearing, so the lien prong is satisfied. Absent an exclusion, you meet the definition for 2026.

Now change one fact. The $16,500 year is a substitute for return the IRS prepared, and your actual return for that year shows $4,000 of tax. Once your original return is processed and the assessment is reduced, the aggregate drops to roughly $57,000. Under the IRM's own examples, that kind of adjustment can support decertification even though you have not paid a dime.

Change a different fact. You have one balance of $80,000 and you are paying it on time under an approved installment agreement. You are not certifiable at all, because IRC 7345(b)(2)(A) excludes debt being paid in a timely manner under an agreement under section 6159. The full list of exclusions is longer than most people expect.

How to find out where you stand

Do not guess. Pull your IRS account transcripts for every year you owe, add the assessed balances, and look for two things: a lien filing or a levy, and any transaction showing certification. The IRS posts a specific transaction code to each certified tax period, and the CP508C notice lists each certified period and balance.

If you are near the line and have not been certified, your options are wider than they will ever be again. An installment agreement, a pending offer in compromise, or a hardship determination can each keep the certification from happening. If you are already certified, the job is to pick the exit that reverses it fastest. For many people that exit is a payment plan, and there is a plain-English overview of installment agreements on the firm's main site. It works well here because IRC 7345(c)(2)(C) requires the IRS to notify the State Department within 30 days of the agreement.

The certification is a lever. The IRS pulls it to get your attention. Once you are paying attention, the goal is to get the account into a posture the statute recognizes, and the lever releases. Knowledge is protection, and in this case it can also be the difference between taking a trip and cancelling one.

What Counts as Seriously Delinquent Tax Debt in 2026?