Lost your EIN confirmation letter — how to get proof of your EIN

Reviewed against official IRS sources · Updated 2026-07-28

The IRS will not send you another CP 575. Its own notice page is explicit: the original CP575A-J series "cannot be duplicated or recreated." That notice is issued once, when the EIN is assigned.

You can still get written confirmation of the EIN, and banks accept it. There are three routes: download the digital CP 575 from your IRS Business Tax Account (fastest, self-service), ask for Letter 147C on the phone, or pull an entity transcript.

Letter 147C is requested by telephone — 800-829-4933, Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time. There is no form to file and nothing to fax in. Once your identity is verified, the IRS can fax the letter to you straight away, or mail it to the address of record in about 10 to 14 business days.

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Why the IRS won't resend your CP 575

CP 575 is a one-time notice generated when your EIN is assigned. The IRS does not keep it as a reproducible document, which is why its guidance answers the question flatly: the original CP575A-J series cannot be duplicated or recreated.

Practical consequence: keep the original. The IRS advises making several copies of the notice, because it is what gets asked for whenever EIN verification is needed.

What replaces it is a different document that proves the same fact — that this EIN belongs to this entity. Banks, payment processors and licensing bodies accept these substitutes.

Option 1 — download a digital CP 575 (fastest)

The IRS now issues a digital EIN verification notice inside Business Tax Account. In the IRS's wording: "The new CP575 notice is a substitute for the CP575A-J notice series and Letter 147C." It downloads immediately — no call, no waiting.

Business Tax Account is open to sole proprietors, partners in a partnership, S corporation shareholders, and designated officials of C corporations, government entities, tax-exempt organisations and Indian Tribal governments.

Signing in means creating an IRS online account and verifying your identity with a photo ID. If you cannot complete that step — a common situation for a foreign responsible party — use the phone route below instead.

Option 2 — Letter 147C by phone

Letter 147C, "EIN Previously Assigned", is the IRS's written confirmation for an EIN that was lost, misplaced or forgotten. It is requested on the phone and nowhere else.

  1. 1
    Call the Business and Specialty Tax Line
    800-829-4933, Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. your local time. TTY 800-829-4059.
  2. 2
    Ask for Letter 147C by name
    Say you need Letter 147C, EIN verification. Asking for "a copy of my CP 575" leads nowhere — that document cannot be reissued.
  3. 3
    Pass identity verification
    The assistor confirms you are authorised to receive the number before releasing it. Have the entity's legal name, address and your own identifying details ready.
  4. 4
    Choose fax or mail
    The IRS can give the EIN verbally and send the letter by fax while you are on the call, or mail it to the address of record — about 10 to 14 business days.
The fax here runs one way: the IRS faxes the letter to you. Nothing is faxed in, so there is no filing service to buy — ours included.

Option 3 — entity transcript

An entity transcript is the third written confirmation the IRS lists. It is a business tax transcript showing the entity's account, including the EIN. Useful when the requester will accept a transcript and you already have transcript access.

Who is allowed to request it

The IRS releases an EIN only to someone authorised to receive it. In practice that means a person with standing in the entity, or a representative you have formally authorised:

  • Sole proprietor.
  • A partner in a partnership, or a corporate officer with authority to bind the entity.
  • The fiduciary of a trust or estate.
  • A representative you authorised on Form 2848 (power of attorney) or Form 8821 (tax information authorization).
A nominee has no standing. The IRS does not accept nominees or individuals without proper authorisation to represent the entity.

Calling from outside the United States

800-829-4933 is a US toll-free number and generally cannot be dialled from abroad. For EIN matters the IRS publishes an international line in the Instructions for Form SS-4: 267-941-1099, 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday to Friday. It is not toll-free.

That line is published for EIN applications. Confirm with the assistor that they can issue Letter 147C on the same call before you rely on it.

If you never got an EIN in the first place

Everything above assumes the EIN exists and you have lost the paperwork. If the entity has no EIN yet, that is a different job: you file Form SS-4. Where the IRS online tool will not work — no SSN or ITIN for the responsible party — the form goes in by fax and the IRS faxes the EIN back, generally within about four business days.

See how to get an EIN without an SSN or ITIN for the full walkthrough.

Need a new EIN, not a copy of an old letter?

Verifying an existing EIN is a phone call to the IRS — we can't do that part for you. What we do handle is the other job: filing Form SS-4 when the online EIN tool won't work because the responsible party has no SSN or ITIN. We route it to the right IRS fax line and email you the transmission report.

Flat $2.49 up to 25 pages. Optional add-on: we receive the IRS's fax reply on our line and email you the EIN as a PDF.

Fax Form SS-4 to the IRS

Frequently asked questions

No. The IRS states the original CP575A-J series cannot be duplicated or recreated. Ask for the digital CP 575 in Business Tax Account or Letter 147C instead — both prove the same thing.

No. Letter 147C is requested by phone on 800-829-4933. There is no form to file and nothing to fax in. The IRS can fax the finished letter out to you, but the request itself is a phone call.

If you ask the IRS to fax it, you can have it during or shortly after the call. By mail, expect roughly 10 to 14 business days to the address of record.

Yes — 147C exists precisely to serve as EIN verification where the original notice is gone. The IRS also states the digital CP 575 from Business Tax Account is accepted by banks and other institutions as written confirmation of an entity's EIN.

Signing in requires an IRS online account with photo-ID identity verification, which a foreign responsible party often cannot complete. In that case the phone route to Letter 147C is the practical option, using the international line 267-941-1099.

No, and we would rather say so plainly. The request is a phone call the IRS will only take from an authorised person after verifying their identity — there is nothing to fax, so there is no service for us to sell here. We can help when you need to file Form SS-4 for a new EIN.

Official sources

Horizance is not affiliated with the IRS. This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice.

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