IRS Deadline: February 1, 2027
Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification
Send secure W-9 requests, collect completed forms online, track responses, and prepare payee information for 1099 filing. TaxFormHero replaces the PDF-by-email, spreadsheet and follow-up routine with one W-9 collection portal, at $0.69 per request with free TIN matching.
Six steps from an email address to a certified Form W-9 sitting in your account. Link generation, delivery, recipient creation and TIN matching all happen on their own once a request is paid for — the only thing left to you is deciding who to ask.
Enter one payee, or import a spreadsheet of hundreds with the W-9 template. Fill in as much or as little as you know -- an email address on its own is a complete row.
Tick the rows you want, add them to the cart, and pay alongside your filings. A request has no link at all until it is paid for.
On payment, every request is issued a single-purpose link and emailed to the address you entered. Your payee needs no account and no password.
They confirm their name, federal tax classification, address and taxpayer identification number, then sign under penalties of perjury.
The completed Form W-9 is available as a PDF of the real IRS form, and the payee is added to your recipient list automatically.
The certified name and TIN go to TIN matching at no extra charge, and the request shows Verified or Mismatch on your dashboard.
The pointer does the typing and the clicking. Nothing here is real — it is the same screens you will use, with sample data, running end to end.
Chasing W-9s by email means a sent-items folder and a memory. The portal replaces both with a status on every row, so the question "who still owes me a W-9?" has an answer you can read in a second rather than reconstruct.
Six statuses, filterable — Draft, Sent, Opened, Completed, Accepted and Cancelled. Filter the list by any of them.
Opened is its own status — it tells you the link was reached but the form was not finished, which is a different problem from silence and needs a different email.
One-click reminder — resend the same link from the request page. The portal counts how many reminders have gone out and when the last one was sent.
Correct a wrong address — edit the email on an open request and the link goes to the new address, which is the whole point of fixing it.
Reminders go out when you send them. TaxFormHero does not run a drip sequence on your behalf, and this page will say so until it does.
What each status means
Created but not paid for. No link exists yet.
Paid for, link issued and emailed to your payee.
They reached the form but have not signed it yet.
Signed and certified. The PDF is ready to download.
Every January problem with a 1099 — a missing TIN, a name that does not match IRS records, an address that bounces — is a W-9 problem that went unsolved in March. The work does not get smaller by waiting; it gets harder, because the contractor has already been paid and has nothing left to gain by replying.
| The January problem | Chasing W-9s by email | With the W-9 portal |
|---|---|---|
| No TIN on file | Found the week the 1099 is due, when nobody is answering. | The request is open from the day you engage the payee, and its status says so. |
| Name and TIN do not match | Discovered from a CP2100 notice, months after filing. | Free TIN matching runs on the completed W-9, so a mismatch surfaces before you file. |
| Details retyped from a PDF | Someone copies a scan into a spreadsheet, and a digit changes on the way. | The payee types their own details once, and they become the recipient record. |
| Signed forms scattered | Attachments spread across inboxes and a shared drive. | Every certified form sits in one account, downloadable singly or in bulk. |
When the deadline arrives, the details are already there. See 1099-NEC filing for contractor payments, or 1099-MISC filing for rent, royalties and other reportable payments.
Send the request with the engagement letter. The W-9 is signed before the first invoice, not after the last one.
Make the W-9 one step of setting a vendor up. Import the whole supplier list at once and let the portal collect what is missing.
Owners, trades and repair contractors all need a W-9 on file before the rent and service payments are reported.
Collect on behalf of each client company separately, so one login covers the whole book without mixing payee lists.
Onboard sellers and creators in bulk, then file the 1099-NEC or 1099-K that follows from the same certified details.
A handful of contractors a year, handled without a filing cabinet, a scanner or a chain of forwarded emails.
Onboarding a vendor means asking a stranger for a full, unmasked taxpayer identification number. That is the single most sensitive thing a payer collects, and it is why none of this is left to an email attachment.
Each request gets its own 256-bit random token, issued only at payment and good for one request. There is no directory to browse and no id to increment.
Every public W-9 route is throttled, so guessing at links is not merely unrewarding but impossible to attempt at any scale.
Each occasion of access that leads to a submission is recorded against the request — a condition the IRS sets for any electronic W-9 system, and one you can show.
A link lapses after 45 days unless you extend it. Cancel a request and the link stops working immediately, whatever state it was in.
Completed W-9 PDFs are stored privately and served only to the account that requested them. They are never published to a shareable object URL.
Requests, forms and payee records belong to the company that collected them. See Security & Compliance for how the platform is audited and protected.
Most tools do one half of this. The value is in the join: a W-9 signed in March becomes the recipient record your 1099-NEC is filed from in January, without anyone retyping a taxpayer identification number in between.
When a payee signs, they are added to your recipient list automatically and queued for TIN matching. From there the same details carry through 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC filing, e-delivery of recipient copies, and print and mail for the ones who want paper.
W-9 requested and signed
Payee added to your recipients
TIN matched against IRS records
1099 e-filed with the IRS
Recipient copy delivered
One flat rate per request, whether you send one or five hundred. No volume tiers to work out, no subscription, no signup fee, and nothing to cancel. W-9 requests are paid for in the same cart as your filings, by card or PayPal.
Keying in a W-9 you already hold on paper costs nothing — you are only charged when you ask someone else to complete and sign one.
See full pricingWhat $0.69 covers
A secure signing link, emailed to your payee
The completed Form W-9 as a downloadable PDF
Free TIN matching on the certified name and number
The payee added to your recipient list, ready to file
Bulk import and bulk PDF download, at no extra cost
Filing the 1099 itself is priced separately, per form
The IRS describes the form's purpose plainly: it is used “to provide a correct TIN to payers” who must file information returns. The payee certifies the number; the requester keeps the form and files the return. Form W-9 is never sent to the IRS.
The Instructions for the Requester of Form W-9 (Rev. March 2024) permit a requester to establish a system for electronic submission, on conditions: the system must document occasions of user access that lead to a submission, be reasonably certain the submitter is the person named, provide the same information as the paper form, make a hard copy available on request, and require an electronic signature that authenticates and verifies the submission under the same perjury statement the paper form carries.
The TaxFormHero portal is built to those conditions. All four certifications are printed in full above the signature rather than summarised, the signature is the last entry a payee makes, access is logged against the request, and the completed form is reproduced as the IRS document itself, not a summary of it.
Sources: IRS — About Form W-9 and IRS — Instructions for the Requester of Form W-9 (03/2024). TaxFormHero is not a law firm; nothing here is legal or tax advice for your situation.
Form W-9 is how a payee gives a business their correct taxpayer identification number and certifies it. The business keeps the form -- it is never sent to the IRS -- and uses the details to file information returns such as Form 1099-NEC at year end. The current version is Rev. March 2024.
The IRS expects the payer to have the payee's correct name and taxpayer identification number when it files an information return, and a signed W-9 is the evidence of it. Collecting one before the first payment is common practice, because a payee who has already been paid has far less reason to reply. TaxFormHero is not a law firm and this is not legal advice for your situation.
The IRS permits requesters to establish a system for electronic W-9 submissions, subject to conditions in the Instructions for the Requester of Form W-9. The portal is built to those conditions: the certifications are shown in full, the signature is the last entry in the submission, access that leads to a submission is logged, and the completed form can be produced as a hard copy on request.
A flat $0.69 per request. That covers the signing link, the completed Form W-9 and free TIN matching. There is no signup fee, no subscription and no minimum volume, and you pay in the same cart as your filings.
No. They open the link, complete the form and sign it. There is nothing to register for, nothing to download and no password to lose.
Applied For is a real answer on the paper form and the portal accepts it. The certification still stands, but the payee cannot be accepted into your recipient list until the number arrives, because there is nothing yet to file with.
Yes, and it costs nothing. Keyed entry records the details you hold without recording a signature, because only the payee can certify their own form. The PDF says so on its face, so a keyed record can never be mistaken for a certified one.
Yes. Download the W-9 import template, fill in whatever you know -- an email address is the only column that has to be there -- and import the sheet. Every row becomes a request, and you can pay for all of them in one go.
Links expire after 45 days by default. You can extend one that is about to lapse, or cancel a request outright, which takes the link out of service immediately.
Yes, at no extra charge on every completed W-9. Each request shows Unverified until the name and TIN have actually been checked, then Verified or Mismatch. It never shows a result for a check that has not happened.
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.