The IRS Is Retiring FIRE, and 1099 Filers Have to Move to IRIS

What the IRS actually announced

The notice, IR-2026-99, is short and the timeline is the whole story. FIRE has been the way businesses e-filed the 1099 family and its cousins for years. It is being shut down, and IRIS, the Information Returns Intake System, takes its place. After the November maintenance window, FIRE stops accepting submissions, so any 1099s, 1098s, or 5498s you file for tax year 2026 during the 2027 season go through IRIS instead.

Three dates carry the weight. November 1 is the last day to run a test file through the old FIRE Trading Partner Test System. November 9 is the last day to make changes to your Information Returns Application for a Transmitter Control Code. And November 19 at 3 p.m. Eastern is the hard stop, the last moment FIRE will take a live information return. Miss that and there is no FIRE fallback in January. The door is IRIS or nothing.

IRIS is not brand new. It went live in 2023 and the IRS has been shifting forms onto it in stages since then, so some filers already know it. What changes now is that the choice disappears. Beginning in 2027 every form FIRE used to handle lives on IRIS, and the old system is not there as a backup for the people who never got around to switching.

Why a reminder is really a deadline

Read the word “reminder” and it is easy to file this under things to deal with later. That instinct is the trap. Moving to IRIS is not a toggle you flip the night before a run. To transmit on IRIS you need an IRIS Transmitter Control Code, and that is a separate credential from the FIRE code you may already hold. You apply for it through an IRS application that involves identity verification, and it does not clear the same day.

For a large employer whose payroll provider or recordkeeper files on its behalf, this mostly happens in the background, and the right move is a short email asking whether they have made the switch and tested it. For the small business that files its own handful of 1099-NEC forms each January through FIRE, nothing happens unless you make it happen. That gap is the reason a quiet reminder in August is worth acting on before the fall.

Who this reaches among Reed Corporation clients

The people affected are the ones who send information returns, not the ones who receive them. If you only ever get a 1099, this is not your problem. If your business issues them, it is. One clarification saves a lot of needless worry: W-2s do not go through FIRE at all. They run through the Social Security Administration’s Business Services Online, so a company that files only W-2s is untouched by this. The FIRE sunset is a 1099, 1098, 1042-S, and 5498 story.

Businesses that pay contractors

Any closely held business that pays $600 or more to an independent contractor files a 1099-NEC, and a lot of our clients file a stack of them every January. If you or your bookkeeper submit those through FIRE today, that is the workflow that breaks. The good news for a small filer is that the replacement is friendlier than what it replaces, and we get into that below. The work is in the setup, not the filing.

Real estate owners and their 1099s

Real estate is where this bites hardest, because an operator issues more of these forms than people expect. Rent paid to a landlord entity, payments to property managers, and $600-plus checks to the plumber, the roofer, and the leasing agent can all generate a 1099. An owner running several properties through an LLC is often a heavier information-return filer than a small operating company, and every one of those filings has to move to IRIS.

Anyone whose entities issue their own forms

High-net-worth clients rarely think of themselves as information-return filers, then remember the family investment LLC, the rental partnership, or the management company that cuts checks and issues forms. If an entity in your structure files 1099s directly rather than through a payroll or fund administrator, it needs an IRIS credential like any business. This is the kind of loose end that belongs in the same review as your entity structure rather than a surprise in January.

What to do before the window closes

Start with the credential. Complete an IRIS Application for a Transmitter Control Code now, because the identity checks take time and the November 9 cutoff to amend an existing application is closer than it looks. If a third party files for you, confirm in writing that they have their IRIS access and have run a test, and treat a vague answer as a no.

Then look at how you will actually file. The IRIS Taxpayer Portal is free, web based, and lets you key returns in by hand or upload a CSV, up to 100 returns at a time, and it will produce the payee copies and keep your records. For most of our clients that portal is plenty. A business filing thousands of forms, or one whose software vendor transmits for it, uses the IRIS Application to Application channel instead, which is built for volume. Either way, the smart move is to send a small test batch before the real run so you meet the system in a low-stakes moment. We covered the 2026 form changes themselves, the new and retired 1099 forms, in our note on the 2026 information return list, and the platform switch sits on top of those.

How we handle the switch for clients

For the businesses whose books we keep, the 1099 run is part of our year-end work, so getting IRIS-ready is something we fold into bookkeeping and payroll and compliance rather than leave for you to chase. We confirm the credential, decide between the portal and the software channel based on how many forms you send, and test before the season. For clients whose entities file on their own, we treat the credential and the contractor-tracking as one job, the same way we handle it inside tax strategy planning around a growing structure. Most of this reaches business owners and high-net-worth clients with rental or investment entities. The rest of our running commentary lives in the Reeder’s Digest.