Free summary, then your call
State Tax Assessment Protest
A state audit ends with a proposed assessment: tax, penalty, and interest, in one number, with a deadline. Protest in time and the number is negotiable. Miss the deadline and it becomes a final assessment, at which point your only options are to pay it and sue for a refund, or to fight collections.
The deadline is not the same anywhere. California gives you 60 days for income tax and 30 for sales tax, from two different agencies. New York and New Jersey give 90. Georgia and North Carolina give 45. Ohio and Michigan count from the day you received the notice; most other states count from the day they mailed it, so days are gone before the envelope arrives. Michigan is stranger still: the right to protest attaches to the notice of intent to assess, so an employer who waits for the real assessment has already lost.
And the total is three different things wearing one number. Tax is argued on the merits. Penalty is waivable for reasonable cause in nearly every state, and it is the easiest money in the case. Interest is essentially never waivable and keeps running while you argue. Nobody tells a taxpayer this, so they respond to the total instead of to the parts.
The protest window is 30 days in California for sales tax and 90 days in New York, and the difference is not a technicality: North Carolina law says an untimely request leaves the assessment final and not subject to further administrative or judicial review. Your notice prints the date. Almost nothing else about it is explained.
- Free, no account, no card
- Your deadline and options in minutes
- Answers deleted after 90 days
This tool is software. It reads your answers, no one reviews them, and it generates and emails the document itself the moment payment completes.
Why the agency will not tell you what to do
The auditor who wrote the assessment is not permitted to help you attack it, and the protest is decided by the department that issued it. A CPA who handles your returns often does not handle protests, and state tax attorneys start at four figures for a five-figure assessment, which is exactly the range where a small business cannot justify the fee and cannot afford the tax either. The rules are public: each state publishes what a protest must contain, and Texas and Pennsylvania publish it in detail.
What the free summary tells you
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Your deadline, computed
The exact date your response window closes, counted from the date on your notice, and what happens if it has already passed.
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Your options under the published rules
Which paths the regulations actually give you, and which one your answers point to.
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The numbers the agency will use
Computed from the same published standards the agency applies, so you walk in knowing what they know.
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Sources
This tool provides general information based on published state revenue department rules and statutes. Its citations and figures were checked against official sources using AI-assisted research, most recently on 2026-09-01; no licensed tax professional has reviewed this content. It is not legal or tax advice. Deadlines were verified against official state sources, but states revise them and several key the real deadline to a date printed on the notice itself: the date on your notice controls over anything shown here, and you should confirm it before relying on this. For an assessment over $50,000, an allegation of fraud, a nexus dispute, or a criminal referral, retain a state tax attorney or CPA.