What is Form 8822?
Form 8822, Change of Address, notifies the IRS that you — an individual taxpayer — have a new home mailing address. The IRS sends refund checks, identity-verification letters, balance-due notices, and audit correspondence to the address on file, and legally, a notice mailed to your last known address counts as delivered whether you saw it or not.
Filing your next tax return with the new address also updates the record — but if there's a gap of months between moving and filing (or you're expecting correspondence, a paper refund, or stimulus-style payments), Form 8822 closes it. Business addresses use the companion form 8822-B.
Who files Form 8822?
- Anyone who moved with months to go before their next return gets filed.
- Filers expecting IRS mail — paper refund checks, notices, or an ongoing correspondence audit.
- Separated spouses — each should file separately so both get copies of joint-year correspondence.
- Parents moving with dependents — one checkbox covers children who filed under the same address.
Deadlines
No deadline, but file promptly — processing takes 4 to 6 weeks, and until it lands, notices go to the old address and still count as legally delivered. USPS forwarding is a backstop, not a substitute: refund checks are often marked "do not forward."
How to fill out Form 8822
Part I — check the return types
Individual income tax is line 1; gift and estate tax returns have their own checkboxes.
Enter names and SSNs
Yours and your spouse's as they appear on your returns.
Old address, then new address
Include apartment numbers and any foreign-address details exactly.
Sign — both spouses for joint filers
Joint filers who've separated should each file their own 8822.
Mail it to the right campus
The instructions' chart assigns the IRS address by your old state. No e-file option exists for this one.