IRIS, FIRE, and what the retirement means for your firm

If your firm has filed information returns electronically, it has almost certainly done so through FIRE (Filing Information Returns Electronically), the IRS system that has taken 1099s since the 1990s. It is being retired, and the dates are published.

This is not a rumor or a roadmap item. The IRS's own FIRE page carries four statements that between them describe the whole transition, and two of them are dates.

The two sentences that decide something now

The same page says two more things, and these are the operational ones. First: due to the retirement of the FIRE System, the IRS is no longer accepting new Information Returns (IR) Applications for Transmitter Control Codes (TCCs). A firm that had been meaning to get a FIRE TCC cannot.

Second: current FIRE users must complete an Information Returns Intake System (IRIS) Application for TCC and transition to IRIS to file tax year 2026 information returns during the 2027 filing season. The IRIS TCC is a separate five-digit code with its own application. It identifies the business that e-files the forms and, in the IRS's words, it can only be used for IRIS. A FIRE TCC does not become an IRIS TCC.

Whether that application is yours depends on who transmits. A firm that sends its own forms to the IRS, through the IRS's portal or its own software, needs its own IRIS TCC, and because applications take time, that is the first thing to do. A firm that files through a service that transmits for it does not: the service transmits under its own code, and that includes this product. Either way, from January 1, 2027 corrections to tax year 2025 returns go through IRIS too. There will be nowhere else to send them.

What IRIS actually is

Two ways in, and the choice mostly comes down to volume:

• The Taxpayer Portal: a free, web-based filing system. You key returns by hand or upload a CSV, up to 100 returns at a time. For a firm with two clients and nine forms, this is genuinely sufficient, and it costs nothing.
• Application to Application, or A2A: the machine interface, which third-party software uses to e-file thousands of returns, up to 100 MB at a time. This is what a filing product connects to, and it is how this one files.
• Either way, somebody holds an IRIS TCC: your firm, if it transmits itself, or the service, if a service transmits for you. The Portal is free; what you pay for with software is everything around the transmission: the W-9 collection, the recipient statements, the corrections, and knowing what came back.

What does not change

The deadlines. The 1099-NEC is due to the IRS and to the recipient on the same date, and the system it travels through has never affected that.

The 10-return mandate. Ten or more information returns in total, across form types, still means electronic filing; the retirement changes which electronic system, not whether.

The state obligations. The IRS's Combined Federal/State Filing program forwards records to participating states, but the IRS is explicit about the limits of that service: the IRS acts as a forwarding agent only, and it is the issuer's responsibility to contact the appropriate state or states for further information. Several states require direct filing regardless. Each state guide here says which.

What this product files

Form 1099-NEC · tax year 2026

E-filed with the IRS through IRIS from January 2027. Copy B emailed to recipients who consent, or produced for you to print and mail, and corrections at no charge.

Form 1099-MISC · tax year 2026

E-filed with the IRS through IRIS from January 2027. Copy B emailed to recipients who consent, or produced for you to print and mail, and corrections at no charge.

Form 1099-K · tax year 2026

E-filed with the IRS through IRIS from January 2027. Copy B emailed to recipients who consent, or produced for you to print and mail, and corrections at no charge.

W-9 collection

A link the contractor fills in themselves, or a paper W-9 recorded against the recipient. Included in the price.

Built for IRIS from the start

This product has never filed through FIRE. It was written for IRIS's application-to-application interface from the start, so the retirement is not a migration here: preparing the IRIS transmission, checking it against the published IRIS rules and reading the IRS's answer are the only things it has ever done for information returns.

IRS Publication 5718 is the specification of record for A2A. The product carries every one of the published IRIS rules (not only the ones it can check before a transmission), so a rule that comes back in an acknowledgement still has an explanation attached when it reaches you.