One controlled place to collect taxpayer information, organize multiple payer entities and EINs, validate payee data, prepare high-volume 1099, W‑2 and ACA returns, and transmit through IRS IRIS. Bring the data you have. Keep the entities you need. Pay less per form as volume grows.
The short answer
By centralizing the operation without flattening the structure. One TaxFormHero account holds multiple payer entities and separate EINs, each keeping its own legal name, recipients, forms and filing history. Data arrives by import or conversion, is validated before a return exists, and nothing transmits until someone reviews it and submits. Filing is charged per form on graduated bands, from $1.99 down to $0.45, with custom pricing available beyond the published table.
An import does not file. That is the point of the middle of this diagram.
Enterprise filing rarely belongs to one legal entity or one person. It reaches across subsidiaries, operating companies, payroll, tax, finance and security.
| Item | Scope | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Legal name and EIN | Per payer entity | A subsidiary files under its own identity, not the group's |
| Recipient directory | Per payer entity | A vendor paid by two entities is two records, as the IRS sees it |
| Forms and filing history | Per payer entity | An audit question about one company is answered without unpicking the rest |
| TIN match results | Per payer entity | Stored against the payee, with the payer's authorization on record |
| Account access | Shared | One place for the filing team, rather than disconnected logins per company |
| Workflow and templates | Shared | A team trained on one form type is not retrained for the next |
| Retention | Shared, 4 years | Records stay retrievable in the account they were filed from |
Supported forms include the 1099 series (NEC, MISC, K, DA, DIV, INT, B, C, R, S, PATR, SA), W‑2 and W‑2C, ACA Forms 1095‑B and 1095‑C, the 1098 series, the 5498 series and W‑2G — over twenty in all. Browse every supported form and its deadline.
No filing platform can make bad payee data correct after submission. The place to reduce risk is before a return exists.
Send a contractor, vendor or landlord a secure signing link. They complete and sign online without an account. The signed W‑9 returns as a PDF and the payee joins that payer's recipient list. $0.69 per paid request, including the link, the PDF, the recipient record and TIN matching.
Name-and-TIN pairs go through IRS e‑Services Interactive TIN Matching and return in seconds — and that stays true when a team selects hundreds of records from an imported list. Every record is sent and answered individually, never queued as an overnight batch. $0.49 per check bought separately.
Interactive matching is limited to eligible payers and their authorized agents, so the payer's authorization is kept with its date, its exact wording and its signer. A verified result stands for three years, which also stops the same payee being re-checked and re-billed without cause.
Stated precisely, because the distinction matters at scale
A Verified result means the submitted name and taxpayer ID agree with IRS records. It does not determine reportability, choose a form, validate an amount, satisfy a recipient-delivery obligation or foreclose every compliance consequence. Those remain your team's determinations, and a vendor that implies otherwise is selling you a comfort rather than a control.
Excel, CSV, or a legacy FIRE file — without re-keying a year of records.
| Import | One row represents | Operational use |
|---|---|---|
| Payer import | One legal payer entity | Onboarding subsidiaries, departments and client entities at scale |
| Recipient & form import | One recipient and the box amounts, for a payer, tax year and form chosen first | Creating a high-volume batch of reviewable draft forms |
The free converter opens a Publication 1220 fixed-width .txt or
.dat file and produces a payer CSV and a recipient-and-form CSV. It runs in
the browser: the file is not uploaded, stored or logged, and once the page
has loaded the conversion will even run offline. Useful when moving off a FIRE-era process
while keeping control of the historical source data.
Open the FIRE File Converter.
Form-specific templates and their instruction sheets set the expected columns and formatting. Starting from the template rather than from an internal extract is what keeps a 40,000-row import from failing on column three. Imported returns arrive as drafts for review and service selection before anything is transmitted.
A correction begins from the original payer, tax year and form: mark it corrected, update the return, save and submit. The recipient copy must be corrected too. Each correction is transmitted as a new return and charged at the current per-form rate.
Chosen per form at checkout, so an entity that needs print does not pay for an entity that does not.
| Service | Operational use | Price |
|---|---|---|
| State filing | Direct filing for 41+ states; Combined Federal/State filing included for participating states | $0.99 |
| Print & mail | Recipient copies printed at a SOC 2 and HIPAA-compliant facility and posted USPS first class | $1.69 |
| E-delivery | Encrypted copies through a single-use secure link; consent collected and recorded | $0.19 |
| TIN matching | Pre-filing validation of submitted payee name/TIN pairs | $0.49 |
| W-9 request | Secure signing link, signed PDF, recipient record and TIN matching included | $0.69 |
Recipient PDF copies are free to download. Form 1096 and W‑3 transmittals are handled, so there is no separate transmittal process to prepare or post.
Graduated bands, each charged at its own rate. No single lower rate applied retroactively to an entire order.
| Band | Which forms | Price per form |
|---|---|---|
| First 150 forms | forms 1–150 | $1.99 |
| Next 350 forms | forms 151–500 | $0.99 |
| Next 500 forms | forms 501–1,000 | $0.60 |
| Beyond 1,000 forms | every form after | $0.45 |
| Band | Which forms | Price per form |
|---|---|---|
| First 50 forms | forms 1–50 | $2.99 |
| Next 100 forms | forms 51–150 | $1.99 |
| Next 350 forms | forms 151–500 | $0.99 |
| Beyond 500 forms | every form after | $0.60 |
The arithmetic, since it is the thing most often misread
1,500 forms costs $1,170.00 before optional services — an average of $0.78 per form. It is not calculated as 1,500 × $0.45. Each band is priced at its own rate and the cheapest one applies only to the forms that sit inside it. For volumes or requirements beyond the published bands, contact us about custom pricing.
Security claims should be concrete enough to check. These are.
| Control area | What is in place |
|---|---|
| Independent assurance | AICPA SOC 2 Type I for the Security trust services criteria. Unqualified opinion issued by Prescient Assurance LLC, October 2025. Report available under NDA. |
| Encryption | 256-bit encryption at rest and in transit |
| Account access | Optional two-factor authentication |
| Data retention | Filing data and PDF copies available for four years, under the payer they were filed for |
| Payee data | TIN-match requests travel over an encrypted connection; results are stored against the payee inside the account so they can be shown, retained and not duplicated |
| TIN match authorization | The payer's authorization is kept with its date, wording and signer, because interactive matching is limited to eligible payers and their authorized agents |
| W-9 requests | Single-purpose secure links issued after payment; recipients need no platform account to complete and sign |
| Print facility | Recipient copies printed at a SOC 2 and HIPAA-compliant facility |
| Transmission | IRS-authorized e-file provider, transmitting through IRS IRIS |
For CPAs & tax pros
The same platform, framed for a firm filing on behalf of many clients.
FIRE file converter
Publication 1220 files to importable CSVs, converted in your own browser.
Instant TIN matching
Interactive checks, answered per record, including from a large list.
Security & compliance
The full detail behind the control table above.
Payer entities, payee collection, data validation, legacy conversion, high-volume import, filing, delivery and retention — in one workflow, with the review step kept where it belongs.
Answers come straight from our guides. For anything about your own filing, we’ll point you to a person.
Can’t find the answer? Contact us
General information, not tax advice. Please don’t type Social Security or tax ID numbers here.