Letter 104C: Address change not made: the request was unsigned

What Letter 104C is

Sent when correspondence asking for an address change is "NOT signed by the taxpayer or authorized representative." The manual says the change is not acted on; AM sends Letter 104C with Form 8822 or 8822-B information and "the paragraph stating the form MUST be signed" (IRM 21.3.3.4(6), Oct. 1, 2023). "Due to the high level of identity theft" the assistor also records the requester's name and title (IRM 21.3.3.4(5)). Address changes are on the P-21-3 exclusion list, so no reply clock runs on them (IRM 21.3.3.2(3), Oct. 1, 2025). Staff may not update an address "strictly based on the yellow sticker address provided by USPS" either (IRM 21.3.3.4.11.1.1(3), Oct. 1, 2019).

The deadline

No deadline, but the old address remains the address of record and notices keep going there.

What to do

Send a signed Form 8822-B, to Ogden M/S 6273 or Kansas City M/S 6055 S-2 as the form directs (IRM 21.3.3.4.8.5(6), Oct. 1, 2026). A business "must notify the IRS whenever the responsible party changes" on the same form (IRM 21.3.3.4.8.5(7)).

Why the address of record is guarded

Every notice the IRS sends goes to the address of record, and most of the deadlines on this site run from the date a notice was mailed there, whether or not it was read. Redirecting a business's mail is therefore one of the first things an identity thief tries, and the IRS treats address changes with corresponding suspicion: a change request must be signed by the taxpayer or an authorized representative, assistors may not update an address from a Postal Service forwarding sticker alone, and the requester's name and title are recorded. A letter asking for a change that is not signed, or is signed by someone with no authority on file, is not acted on. Letter 104C tells the writer so and points to the right form. Address changes are also excluded from the normal correspondence reply clock, so no interim letter will follow; if nothing further is sent, the old address simply stays, and so does every notice going to it.

Form 8822-B, and the responsible party

The business address change form is Form 8822-B, signed by an officer, owner, general partner, trustee or an authorized representative with a Form 2848 on file, and mailed to the address in the form's instructions for your state. It takes four to six weeks to process, so a business that is moving should file it before the move and arrange mail forwarding for the gap. The same form is the only way to report a change in the responsible party, the individual who controls the entity, and the law requires that change to be reported within 60 days; a stale responsible party is both a compliance gap and an identity-theft exposure, since that person is who the IRS believes speaks for the EIN. A payer that has had a Letter 6217C entity lock placed after identity theft must attach a copy of it to the 8822-B and expect extra processing. The correspondence guide covers what reaches the IRS and what does not, and the vendor name change guide covers the related case of a name change, which the 8822-B does not do.

Questions about Letter 104C

Have a different notice? The IRS notice decoder lists all 77 in the order they tend to arrive.