The Short Answer
If you lost your EIN confirmation letter, the IRS will not send the original again. That document, the CP-575 notice, is issued once when your EIN is assigned and is never reprinted. What you can get instead is an EIN verification letter, and it carries the same weight with banks, payment processors and payroll providers. There is no online portal, no download page and no third-party service that can produce it for you: an authorized person calls the IRS, confirms the entity details on record, and asks for the letter to be sent by fax or by mail. It is free, and you can request it as often as you need. If you also do not know the EIN itself, find the number first — the phone call goes much faster when you can state it.
What You Actually Lost: The CP-575 Notice
The document people call an EIN confirmation letter is officially the CP-575. It arrives once, shortly after your EIN is assigned, and it states the legal name of the business, the EIN, and the address the IRS has on file. It is a one-time notice by design. No reprint, no duplicate, no exceptions — which is why searching for a way to recover the original is time you cannot get back. Our full guide to the EIN letter from the IRS covers what the notice contains and how institutions read it.
Can You Get a Copy of Your EIN Letter Online?
No. This is the single most searched question on this topic and the honest answer is that no IRS system lets you log in and download a copy of your EIN letter. There is no self-service EIN document portal, the IRS will not email the letter, and any website offering to retrieve or generate an "official copy" for a fee is selling you something it cannot deliver.
There is one narrow exception, and it happens at the moment of application rather than afterwards. When an EIN is issued through the IRS online application, the confirmation notice is presented for download at the end of the session. If your company was formed recently, that PDF may still be sitting in the download folder or the email archive of whoever completed the application — a formation provider, an accountant, or a former partner. That is worth ten minutes of searching before you pick up the phone.
What you genuinely can do online is reconstruct the information rather than the document: check your own records, your bank's onboarding file, your payroll account, or the returns your accountant filed. The IRS side of the process stays offline.
Step 1: Find Your EIN Before You Ask for Anything
The IRS agent will ask you to confirm details, so walk into the call already knowing your number. It usually appears in more places than founders expect: any filed federal tax return, the onboarding file your business bank kept, payroll or contractor payment platforms, state registration and annual report filings, information returns issued in your company's name, and your copy of the original application. If you kept the application itself, our guide to the SS-4 form explains which fields the IRS matches against.
If none of those turn anything up, work through our step-by-step method for finding a lost EIN number before you call. Requesting verification for a number you cannot state is the fastest way to a dead-end conversation.
Step 2: Request Your Replacement From the IRS
The replacement document is the 147C letter, and the request itself is routine. Four things determine whether it works on the first attempt. You must be a person the IRS can legally discuss the entity with — an owner, officer, member, manager, trustee, or a third party with authorization already on file. You need the legal name and the address exactly as the IRS recorded them, not as you use them today. You call the IRS business tax line during its published hours and ask for a 147C letter by name. And you choose fax over mail whenever you can, because fax usually arrives within minutes while mail is measured in weeks and only goes to the address of record.
Our dedicated walkthrough on how to get your 147C letter covers the call itself in detail, including what the agent verifies and how to handle a refusal.
What If Your Bank Insists on the Original CP-575?
This happens often enough to plan for. A junior account opener sees "CP-575" on a checklist and rejects anything else. The response is simple and factual: the IRS issues the CP-575 only once and does not reprint it, and the 147C letter is the verification document the IRS provides in its place. It shows the same legal name and EIN, from the same records.
If the front line will not budge, ask for the business banking or commercial onboarding team rather than arguing at the counter — they see 147C letters constantly. Non-resident founders hit this wall more often, and our guide to opening a US business bank account as a non-resident explains which documents actually move an application forward.
Non-Resident Founders: Where the Letter Usually Goes Missing
Three patterns account for most missing letters among founders outside the United States. The address of record is still a formation agent or a registered agent office, so the notice was delivered somewhere you never see mail. The letter was mailed internationally and never arrived. Or the EIN was obtained on your behalf and the confirmation stayed in someone else's inbox.
The practical fixes are to set up a digital fax number before you call, so the replacement can be delivered in minutes, and to make sure the address the IRS holds is one you actually control. Our guide on getting an EIN as a non-resident business owner covers how these records get set in the first place.
Do Not Apply for a New EIN to Replace a Lost Letter
When a bank deadline is closing in, applying for a fresh EIN looks like a shortcut. It is the most damaging move available. A second EIN splits your filing history across two accounts, causes information returns and payroll records to stop matching, complicates state registrations, and takes far longer to untangle than a verification call would have taken. Your entity has one number; the goal is to prove it, not to replace it. If you are unsure whether your business ever received an EIN at all, start with what an EIN is and how to get one.
What the Replacement Letter Does and Does Not Prove
The letter proves one thing: that a specific EIN belongs to a specific legal name in IRS records. It does not prove your company is in good standing with its state, it does not replace a certificate of formation or a certificate of good standing, and it is not evidence of your current business address. If a counterparty asks for proof of existence rather than proof of tax identity, the document they need comes from the state, not the IRS.
How to Store It So This Does Not Happen Twice
Save the replacement as a PDF with a filename you will still recognize in three years, including the entity name and the year. Keep it in the same folder as your formation documents rather than in an email thread, and keep a second copy somewhere your accountant can reach it. Then check the legal name and address printed on the letter against what your bank, payroll provider and processors have on file, and correct any mismatch now instead of during your next onboarding review. The letter costs nothing to request again, so treat it as a working document — but the ten minutes you spend filing it properly is the cheapest part of this whole process.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can the IRS resend my original CP-575?
No. The CP-575 is issued once and is never reprinted. The 147C verification letter is the official substitute.
Can I download my EIN confirmation letter from the IRS website?
No. There is no IRS portal that provides a copy. The only download ever offered is the notice presented at the end of an online EIN application, at the time of application.
How long does a replacement EIN letter take?
By fax, typically minutes. By mail, weeks — and international mail longer still. Fax is the only realistic option when a bank has given you a deadline.
Is there a fee to replace an EIN confirmation letter?
No. The IRS charges nothing. Any fee you pay is for a digital fax service, not for the document.
Can my accountant request the replacement for me?
Only if a valid authorization is already on file with the IRS before the call. Stating it verbally during the call is not enough.
What if the letter shows an old business address?
The letter reflects IRS records, so update the address with the IRS first. Otherwise you will receive a document that repeats the outdated information you were trying to correct.
Keep Your EIN Records Clean From Day One
Most lost-letter emergencies trace back to an EIN that was applied for quickly, with an address or a responsible party that no longer matches reality. Our EIN application service handles the filing and keeps your records consistent from the start, so the next time a bank asks for confirmation you are forwarding a saved PDF instead of scheduling a phone call.
This article is general information, not tax advice. IRS procedures, phone hours and delivery times change; confirm current details with the IRS or a qualified tax professional before acting.