On November 19, 2026 at 3 p.m. ET the FIRE system stops taking information returns, and from January 1, 2027 the IRIS Taxpayer Portal is the only door left. It is free, it works, and it is not bookkeeping software — it files what you have already worked out. If you transmit your own 1099s, the clock that matters is the Transmitter Control Code, not the shutdown.
Only if you are the one who transmits. The IRS retires the FIRE system on November 19, 2026 at 3 p.m. ET, and from January 1, 2027 IRIS is the only intake system for information returns — current year, prior year and corrections. The IRIS Taxpayer Portal is free, web-based, and files up to 100 returns per submission by manual entry or CSV upload, with downloadable payee copies, saved issuer information, corrections and automatic extension requests. It is genuinely better than the FIRE-era workflow for a small filer, because FIRE required software and the portal does not. Then the catch: you need an IRIS Transmitter Control Code, it is not your FIRE TCC, and the IRS says a typical application takes 45 business days — while one slide in its own deck says 45 calendar days. From November 4, 2026 there are 59 business days until a Form 1099-NEC is due on February 1, 2027, so on a 45-business-day clock you have 14 business days of slack and the practical application deadline is around November 25, 2026. If your payroll provider, accountant or software vendor transmits for you, you can ignore this article — they hold the TCC and their system is already moving to IRIS. Verdict: 3.8/5. A competent free filing channel, not a system that produces the forms.
Nov. 1, 2026 (Sunday) — gone. Last day to file test information returns through the FIRE Trading Partner Test System. If you have not tested, you no longer can. Source: irs.gov FIRE page and IR-2026-99, both read November 4, 2026.
Nov. 9, 2026 (Monday) — 5 days. Last day to make changes to Information Returns (IR) Applications for Transmitter Control Codes. After that the applications become read-only and are retained for historical reference. The IRS also states it is no longer accepting new IR Applications for TCCs for FIRE, so this date only matters to an existing applicant.
Nov. 19, 2026, 3 p.m. ET (Thursday) — 15 days. Last day to file information returns through the FIRE system. That is the whole system, not one form family.
Jan. 1, 2027 (Friday). IRIS becomes the only information returns electronic filing system, including current year, prior year and corrections. There is no fallback, no paper-workaround for the 10-or-more-return filer, and no second vendor.
Feb. 1, 2027 (Monday) — 89 days. Forms 1099-NEC are due to the IRS and to recipients. The statute sets January 31; January 31, 2027 is a Sunday, and both Publication 1099 and the 1099-MISC/NEC instructions say a due date that lands on a weekend or holiday moves to the next business day. Forms W-2 and W-3 are due the same day, to the Social Security Administration, not the IRS.
March 31, 2027 (Wednesday). Electronic deadline for most other information returns. Publication 1099's Guide to Information Returns lists February 28 for the paper filing of most 1099 and 1098 forms with the footnote "the due date is March 31 if filed electronically", and February 28, 2027 is a Sunday, so paper moves to March 1.
IRIS is the Information Returns Intake System, and it has two intake channels, not one. The Taxpayer Portal is the browser interface a human being types into. Application to Application (A2A) is the machine-to-machine channel that software packages and service bureaus use, transmitting in XML and, in the IRS's words, handling "thousands of returns (up to 100 MB at a time)". Both of them require a TCC. Both are IRIS. When the IRS says IRIS is the only system after January 1, 2027, it means both channels together, and it means you are choosing between them rather than between IRIS and something else.
The portal itself does five things, and the list is short enough to quote rather than paraphrase. From the IRS page on e-filing information returns, read on November 4, 2026: it lets you e-file up to 100 returns at a time, enter manually or by .csv upload, download payee copies to distribute, keep a record of completed, filed and distributed forms, and save and manage issuer information. The IRIS 101 deck adds basic validation of data before submission, participation in the Combined Federal/State Filing Program, automatic extension requests, and filing of certain corrected information returns. Sign-in is through ID.me, and you need an Employer Identification Number.
Now the honest half. IRIS does not produce a 1099. It has no ledger, no vendor list, no payment history, no threshold logic and no TIN matching that we could find documented. It will accept a form you have already computed and it will validate the fields; it will not tell you that a contractor crossed $2,000 in August, that a payee is a corporation you probably should not be reporting, or that the name and TIN do not match. That work belongs to your books, your accountant, or a tool like Dext that captures the underlying documents. IRIS is the post office, not the bookkeeper.
Everything in this table comes from the IRS's FIRE page, its e-file information returns page, its IRIS page, Publication 1099 (2026) and the IRIS 101 deck, all read on November 4, 2026. Where a cell says "not published," the IRS does not state it on those pages and we did not guess.
| What | FIRE (until Nov. 19, 2026) | IRIS Taxpayer Portal (from Jan. 1, 2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free to the IRS, but software required — you paid a vendor or a service bureau | Free. Browser, no software licence, no per-form fee |
| How you get in | FIRE account, TCC starting with a numeric character | ID.me sign-in, EIN, IRIS TCC starting with D |
| Volume per transmission | Not published on the pages we read | 100 returns per submission (A2A: up to 100 MB at a time) |
| Data entry | Software generates the file; no manual entry path | Manual form entry or CSV upload |
| Payee copies | Produced by your software | Downloadable from the portal for distribution |
| Records | Your software's problem | Portal keeps completed, filed and distributed forms, plus saved issuer information |
| Corrections | Accepted while the system ran | "Certain corrected information returns" — the IRS does not publish which |
| Extensions | Form 8809 by paper or e-file | Automatic extension request from the dashboard |
| State filing | CF/SF participation handled by your software | CF/SF supported; consent is given during the TCC application |
| Form coverage | 1097, 1098 series, 1099 series, 3921, 3922, 5498 series, W-2G, 1042-S, 8027, 8596, 8955-SSA | 36 forms for tax year 2025: 1042-S, 1097-BTC, the 1098 and 1099 series, 3921, 3922, the 5498 series, W-2G. No 8027, 8596 or 8955-SSA yet |
| New TCC applications | Closed — the IRS stopped accepting new IR Applications for TCC | Open — apply now; typical processing 45 business days |
| Status | Files until Nov. 19, 2026, 3 p.m. ET | The only system from Jan. 1, 2027, including prior year and corrections |
The "36 forms" count is our own count of the tax-year-2025 list on irs.gov's IRIS page, read November 4, 2026. Forms 8027 (tip income), 8596 (federal contracts) and 8955-SSA (retirement plan separated participants) still appear on the FIRE form list on that date; the IRS states that "beginning in 2027, all forms previously supported by FIRE will be available through IRIS" (IR-2026-99, August 24, 2026).
This is the paragraph that saves most readers a wasted afternoon, so it goes before the how-to.
In order, and with the constraint that actually binds on each one. Nothing here needs a consultant; all of it needs a calendar reminder.
One hundred returns per submission is the number that separates two kinds of filer, and the split is sharper than the marketing suggests.
Under about 100: the portal is the right tool, and it is free. A contractor-heavy small business with 40 payees types them in or uploads one CSV, downloads 40 payee copies, and is finished in an afternoon. Nothing on the market beats free for that job, including the paid services.
Between 100 and a few thousand: still workable, just tedious. A business with 340 payees makes four submissions. There is no published daily limit that we could find, but the limit is per submission and the work is per payee, so the real cost is data quality: every re-submission after a rejected record is another 100-form decision.
Thousands: the portal is the wrong channel and the IRS says so implicitly by offering A2A for "thousands of returns (up to 100 MB at a time)". At that size you need a software package, an API client ID, a schema package and Assurance Testing System transmissions before you can file for real. That is a project, not an afternoon, and it is the reason payroll providers and accounting firms are not going to be typing into the portal in January.
Three changes land on the same filing season, and only one of them is about the system. All three are from the December 2026 Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC and Publication 1099 (2026), read on November 4, 2026.
For payments made in 2026, Form 1099-NEC is required for a payee you paid at least $2,000 in services, and Form 1099-MISC uses the same $2,000 base for the payments it covers, with royalties still at $10. The IRS instructions state that for tax years beginning after 2025 the threshold "increased to $2,000 and may be adjusted for inflation beginning in calendar year 2027." The 2027 indexed figure has not been published as of November 4, 2026 — the statute indexes the $2,000 for calendar years after 2026, rounded to the nearest $100, and the number itself is not out. Do not let a vendor's 2027 chart tell you otherwise.
Third-party settlement organizations report only where gross payments to a payee exceed $20,000 and the number of transactions exceeds 200. The IRS's 1099-K instructions for December 2026 restate exactly that, and IR-2025-107 (October 23, 2025) confirms the threshold reverted to the pre-2021 rule. Card payments have no de minimis threshold at all, which is why a business can receive a 1099-K for a few dollars of card volume and none for a year of Venmo.
Public Law 119-21 added reporting for cash tips and qualified overtime compensation, and the 2026 forms carry new fields for both. On Form 1099-NEC: box 1a is the old box 1, 1b is cash tips (included in 1a), 1c is up to two Treasury Tipped Occupation Codes, and 1d is qualified overtime compensation (included in 1a). On Form 1099-MISC the equivalents are 13a, 13b and 14. Form 1099-K gained a cash-tips box (1c) and the occupation code. On the W-2 side, Box 12 carries code TP for total cash tips reported to the employer, TT for total qualified overtime compensation and TA for Trump account contributions, and Box 14 has been split so that 14b holds the Treasury Tipped Occupation Codes.
Two details worth internalising before you touch a CSV. Boxes 1b and 1d are subsets of box 1a, not additions to it — reporting them as extra income overstates the payee's compensation. And code 000 in box 1c means the tips are not qualified tips, so a placeholder 000 quietly costs the recipient a deduction.
Start with the blunt version, because the alternative framing is misleading: there is no third-party alternative to IRIS for the transmission itself. The IRS lists two intake channels, the Taxpayer Portal and Application to Application, and every software product in the market is either a front end that feeds A2A or a service that transmits under its own TCC. What you can choose is who does the work, and whether the free option is worth the hours it costs. These five are the routes buyers actually ask us about, with an honest note on what each one can and cannot do about a 2026 information return.
Best for: paying a small fee to never see a government portal
Best for: your own 1040 — and nothing to do with issuing 1099s
Best for: producing the numbers that IRIS will need, in a system that keeps them
Best for: freelancers and micro-businesses whose 1099 list is short
Best for: individuals filing their own return — not for anyone who issues 1099s
| Route | Cost to file 1099s | Who enters the data | Files with the IRS? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IRIS Taxpayer Portal | $0 | You, manually or by CSV | Yes — the only channel from Jan. 1, 2027 | Up to ~100 payees, or any filer willing to do the typing |
| IRIS A2A | $0 to the IRS, plus software | Your software package | Yes — up to 100 MB per transmission | Thousands of returns; software vendors and service bureaus |
| Intuit 1099 E-File Service | $14.99 for 3 forms, $3.99 each after, over 20 included | You, in a guided interface | Yes, under Intuit's TCC | Small filers who want the job gone in an hour |
| Your accountant or payroll provider | Bundled into their fee | They do | Yes, under their TCC | Anyone who already pays someone to own compliance |
| QuickBooks / Xero / FreshBooks | Subscription you already pay | You, in the ledger | Not by themselves — they feed IRIS or a transmitter | Producing correct payee totals for whoever transmits |
| TurboTax / Credit Karma Tax | Consumer filing prices | You, for your own return | No — individual returns only | The recipient of a 1099, not the issuer |
IRIS facts come from irs.gov's FIRE page, e-file information returns page, IRIS page, Publication 1099 (2026), Publication 5903 and the IRIS 101 deck, all read November 4, 2026. Intuit's figures come from its 1099 E-File Service page on payroll.intuit.com, read the same day. No price in this table is a quote: the IRS charges nothing and Intuit's page is list pricing before any seasonal offer.
Six things did not resolve on November 4, 2026. Each one is a question worth putting to the IRS help desk or your software vendor rather than assuming the convenient answer.
| Claim or question | What we found | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Whether the TCC wait is 45 business days or 45 calendar days | Three IRS sources, two answers. The e-file information returns page says "it may take to up 45 days for processing". Publication 5903 (Rev. 12-2024) says "the typical application will be processed within 45 business day". The IRIS 101 deck of April 13, 2026 says "allow up to 45 calendar days for application processing" on one slide and "the typical application will be processed within 45 business day" on another. The gap between the two readings is about three weeks. | Contradicted by the IRS itself. Plan on business days, which is the longer figure |
| Which corrected returns the portal will accept | The IRIS 101 deck says the portal lets you "file certain corrected information returns" and the IRS page says the system "lets you file corrections". No IRS page we read lists which form types or which correction types are excluded, and the deck adds that the IRS cannot delete a file for you — a duplicate is fixed by a correction that zeroes out all money amounts. | Partly verified. Corrections exist; the exact scope does not |
| When Forms 8027, 8596 and 8955-SSA arrive in IRIS, and through which channel | All three still appear on the FIRE form list on irs.gov on November 4, 2026 and are absent from IRIS's tax-year-2025 list. IR-2026-99 says "beginning in 2027, all forms previously supported by FIRE will be available through IRIS". No IRS page states a month, and none states whether the Taxpayer Portal or only A2A will accept them. | Unverified. Assume A2A-first and confirm with the help desk |
| Whether the 100-return limit is also a daily or annual limit | The IRS says "up to 100 returns at a time" and the deck says "file up to 100 forms per submission". Neither page states a daily, monthly or annual cap. The absence of a published cap is not evidence that no cap exists, and a hard stop in January would be discovered at the worst possible moment. | Unverified. Test with a real second submission before you rely on it |
| The inflation-adjusted 1099-NEC threshold for payments made in 2027 | The $2,000 base applies to payments after December 31, 2025, and the IRS states it "may be adjusted for inflation beginning in calendar year 2027", rounded to the nearest $100 under the statute. As of November 4, 2026 no indexed figure had been published on any IRS page or in the December 2026 form instructions we read. | Not yet published. Any 2027 number you see today is a forecast |
| Whether the portal's automatic extension tile covers the forms that cannot be extended | Publication 1099 offers an automatic 30-day extension through Form 8809, states that the form may be submitted on paper or through IRIS, and then cautions that "for Forms W-2 and 1099-NEC, no automatic extension is available". The portal dashboard exposes a "Request Automatic Extensions" tile without saying which forms it excludes, and no IRS page we read explains what the tile does if you select a 1099-NEC in it. | Unverified. Assume a 1099-NEC cannot be extended automatically |
3.8 out of 5. The score reflects a free system that does one job properly, held back by an administrative queue, a hard volume ceiling, and the fact that the job it does is the easy half of 1099 compliance.
Give the IRS credit where it is due, because this is not a typical government software story. FIRE required software; the portal requires a browser. FIRE filers paid a vendor; the portal is free. The portal takes manual entry or CSV, returns payee copies, remembers your issuer details, files corrections, requests extensions and participates in combined federal/state filing. For a business with forty contractors and no accountant, that is a better product than what it replaced by a wide margin, and the help desk has a real phone number and real hours.
Then look at what it cannot do. It cannot tell you who gets a form. It cannot tell you that a payee crossed $2,000 in August, that a vendor is incorporated, or that a TIN belongs to somebody else. It cannot file more than 100 returns at a time. It cannot promise you a TCC in a week, and its own publications disagree about whether the wait is 45 working days or 45 calendar days. And in three weeks it becomes the only door, for prior-year returns and corrections as well as the current season.
So who should use it? A direct filer with fewer than about a hundred payees, an EIN that matches the IRS record, and the discipline to apply for a TCC this month rather than next. That reader gets a free, adequate, permanent filing channel and should stop reading reviews and go and apply.
Who should not? Anyone whose accountant or payroll provider already transmits — you are a customer of somebody else's TCC and this article is not your problem. Anyone filing thousands of returns, who needs A2A and a software project. And anyone who was quietly hoping the portal would do the bookkeeping: it will not, so pair it with a ledger that can answer "how much did I pay this person in 2026", whether that is QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks or a spreadsheet you actually maintain.
The blunt version: IRIS is a free post office with a six-week queue and a hundred-letter limit per trip. Post offices are useful, and this one is now the only one in town. Just do not confuse it with the person who writes the letters.
November 19, 2026 at 3 p.m. Eastern time is the last day to file information returns through the FIRE system, per the IRS's FIRE page and news release IR-2026-99 of August 24, 2026, both read on November 4, 2026. Two earlier dates have already passed or are about to: November 1, 2026 was the last day to file test information returns through the FIRE Trading Partner Test System, and November 9, 2026 is the last day to make changes to Information Returns Applications for Transmitter Control Codes. The IRS also states that it is no longer accepting new Information Returns Applications for TCCs for FIRE, so a business that has never had a FIRE TCC cannot get one now. After January 1, 2027, IRIS is the only intake system for information returns, including current-year, prior-year and corrected returns.
Yes. The IRS describes it as a free, web-based filing system, and there is no filing fee, no per-form charge and no subscription. The cost is time, not money: you need an Employer Identification Number, an ID.me account to sign in, an IRIS Transmitter Control Code, and the patience to key forms in or build a CSV that matches the IRS template. Compare that with a paid route: Intuit's 1099 E-File Service starts at $14.99 for up to three 1099-MISC forms and charges $3.99 for each additional form, with more than 20 forms included at no additional charge. Neither number is a recommendation; they are the two ends of the market.
No. IRS states that TCCs are not interchangeable between intake systems: FIRE TCCs can only be used in FIRE, ACA TCCs can only be used in AIR, and IRIS TCCs can only be used in IRIS. A TCC is a five-character alphanumeric code; IRIS TCCs start with the letter D, FIRE TCCs start with a numeric character, and ACA TCCs start with B, C or T. The same IRS deck adds that FIRE TCCs are assigned to the user while IRIS TCCs are assigned to the entity, and that an IRIS TCC is issued per role and transmission method, so a business that files through both the portal and Application to Application can hold more than one.
The IRS gives three different answers on its own material, and we report all three. The page on e-filing information returns says it may take up to 45 days for processing. Publication 5903, the IRIS App for TCC tutorial, says processing times may vary but a typical application is processed within 45 business days. The IRS's IRIS 101 presentation says both: one slide reads allow up to 45 calendar days for application processing, and another reads the typical application will be processed within 45 business day. Plan on the longer figure. From November 4, 2026, 45 business days lands around January 12, 2027, which is 20 days before a Form 1099-NEC is due; 45 calendar days lands on December 19, 2026.
Up to 100 returns per submission, according to both the IRS IRIS page and IR-2026-99; the IRIS 101 deck phrases the same limit as file up to 100 forms per submission. There is no published daily or annual cap that we could find, but the absence of a published cap is not a guarantee, and the honest reading is that 100 is a per-submission limit, not a licence to file unlimited volume casually. A business with 340 contractors needs four submissions. A business filing thousands of returns is being pushed toward IRIS Application to Application, which the IRS describes as the channel for thousands of returns, up to 100 MB at a time.
No on both counts. Forms W-2 and W-3 are filed with the Social Security Administration through Business Services Online, not with the IRS, and the FIRE retirement does not change that; the IRS page on e-filing information returns states plainly that to e-file Forms W-2 and W-2C you register with Business Services Online at SSA.gov. Affordable Care Act returns, Forms 1094-B, 1095-B, 1094-C and 1095-C, are filed through the AIR system, whose TCCs start with B, C or T. What IRIS covers is the information return families: the 1099 series, the 1098 series, 1042-S, 1097-BTC, 3921, 3922, the 5498 series and W-2G, with Forms 8027, 8596 and 8955-SSA scheduled to follow.
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