Most IRS notices aren’t random.

Morgan explained that the IRS compares your tax return with income reports coming from third party platforms like Venmo, PayPal, Stripe, and other payment processors.
If those numbers don’t match, the system flags it.

The catch is that the process moves slowly. It can take two or three years before those mismatches show up as a notice.

So the letters arriving now are often connected to tax returns from years ago.