The IRS has a computer system that is legendary. The legend is all about what a nightmare it is. Bill Gates gets headaches just thinking about it. Throw in the human element of people using it and mistakes happen all the time. One area where this happens is the issuance of balance due notices to taxpayers.

Assume you prepare your taxes for 2006. You bite the bullet, write a check for the amount due and send it in on time. Heck, you even send it in early. Ah, you don't have to deal with that mess again until next year or so you think.

A couple months later, you receive a letter from the IRS. The letter is a form CP-14 filing giving you notice that the IRS thinks you failed to send in everything you owed for 2006. How could this be?

The first thing to do is take a breath. If it is a CP-14 notice, you are not in trouble. A CP-14 notice is not used to give you notice that you didn't report the correct tax amount due. It is simply used to tell you that the full amount you reported on your return was not received.

At this point, there are typically two things that have happened. First, you forgot to send in the total amount due. This can often happen if you make quarterly payments and simply forgot to send off a check. Go through your records and determine if you actually sent payment off and if the payment was cleared by your bank. If you find a problem, just send in the amount due.

On the other hand, the IRS may have made the error. For whatever reason, the IRS has a bad habit of applying payments to the wrong taxpayer accounts. If you are sure all payments were made, it is time to take action. Get copies of the checks for all your payments. Next, call the telephone number on the CP-14 notice [it varies by your location]. The person you speak with will hunt through the system to try to find the problem. If he or she can't, you will be asked to send in copies of your checks and the IRS will then resolve the matter.

At the end of the day, the CP-14 notice is nothing to panic about. Figure out if you paid and then take the appropriate action.