Information-return deadlines for the 2027 filing season

Every calendar you can buy says January 31. For tax year 2026 that date falls on a Sunday, and the general instructions have a rule for that, so the deadline your firm is actually working to is Monday, February 1, 2027.

This is not a grace period and it is not an extension. It is the ordinary next-business-day rule, and it applies to filing and to furnishing alike.

Tax year 2026, filed in 2027

Each row below is the statutory date, and then the date after Part C's weekend-and-holiday rule has been applied.

1099-NEC: file with the IRS

Statutory January 31. January 31, 2027 is a Sunday, so: Monday, February 1, 2027. Paper and electronic share this date; e-filing buys no extra time on a 1099-NEC the way it does on a 1099-MISC.

1099-NEC: furnish Copy B to the recipient

Statutory January 31, so also Monday, February 1, 2027. Two obligations, two penalty sections, one date.

1099-MISC: furnish Copy B to the recipient

Statutory January 31, so Monday, February 1, 2027.

1099-MISC: furnish, when only boxes 8 or 10 are reported

Statutory February 15. February 15, 2027 is Washington's Birthday, a legal holiday in the District of Columbia, so: Tuesday, February 16, 2027.

1099-MISC: file with the IRS on paper

Statutory February 28. February 28, 2027 is a Sunday, so: Monday, March 1, 2027.

1099-MISC: file with the IRS electronically

March 31, 2027, a Wednesday. No move.

1099-K: furnish Copy B to the payee

Statutory January 31, so Monday, February 1, 2027.

1099-K: file with the IRS electronically

March 31, 2027, a Wednesday. No move.

Why the 1099-NEC is the one that bites

A 1099-MISC or 1099-K filed electronically has until the end of March. A 1099-NEC does not: it is due to the IRS and to the recipient on the same day, at the start of February, and the general instructions state that for Forms W-2 and 1099-NEC, no automatic extension is available.

An automatic 30-day extension of time to file exists for other information returns, on Form 8809, and it has to be filed by the due date of the returns to get the extension. An extension of time to furnish the recipient statements is a separate request on Form 15397, which must be requested online or by fax only. Neither of those helps a 1099-NEC's filing date.

So for a firm whose January work is nonemployee compensation, there is one date, it is the first business day of February, and there is no version of the season in which it moves.

One state date, as a warning about the rest

Georgia publishes its own due-date table in the employer's withholding guide, and for this season it reads 2/01/2027 for W-2 and 1099-NEC and 3/01/2027 for all other 1099s: the same two dates, rolled the same way, arrived at independently. That is a useful check on the arithmetic above.

It is also a warning. State deadlines are not all January 31: New Jersey's 1099 reporting date is February 15, and Massachusetts splits its own dates by form the way the IRS does. Each of the state guides here says what that state's date is, on that state's own authority.

What to do with this in November

Two things, and they are both cheap now and expensive in January. Get the W-9s in, because a missing TIN turns into backup withholding and a form you would not otherwise have had to file. And confirm which system each client's returns will go through, because the one that has carried most small firms' filings for twenty years stops taking them in November.