Form 1099-INT Deadlines: Due Dates, Extensions, and Penalties

Form 1099-INT deadlines fall on three dates: January 31 to get Copy B to the recipient, the last day of February to file Copy A with the IRS on paper, and March 31 to file Copy A with the IRS electronically. For tax year 2025 forms filed in 2026, both January 31 and February 28 land on a Saturday, so the recipient deadline moves to Monday, February 2, 2026, and the paper IRS deadline moves to Monday, March 2, 2026. The electronic deadline stays on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.¹

The Recipient Deadline: January 31

Copy B goes to the person who received the interest by January 31 of the year after the interest was paid.¹ For the 2026 season, that becomes February 2, 2026 because January 31 is a Saturday.

On the recipient copy, you can mask the first five digits of the recipient’s Social Security number or EIN with Xs or asterisks. That truncation is allowed only on the recipient’s statement, never on Copy A sent to the IRS.²

The IRS Deadline: February 28 on Paper, March 31 Electronically

Paper filers send Copy A to the IRS by the last day of February, with Form 1096 as a cover sheet summarizing the batch. In 2026, February 28 is a Saturday, so the paper deadline becomes Monday, March 2, 2026.¹

Electronic filers get an extra month. The e-file deadline is March 31, which in 2026 is a Tuesday and needs no weekend adjustment.¹

You don’t always get to pick. Electronic filing is required for any payer who files 10 or more information returns in the calendar year, counted in aggregate across nearly every return type including W-2s and all 1099 varieties. Five Forms 1099-INT plus five Forms 1099-DIV hits the threshold and forces e-filing on all of them.³

Who Actually Has to File

The deadlines only matter if you have a filing obligation. Form 1099-INT is required for any recipient paid at least $10 in interest during the year, covering ordinary taxable interest, U.S. Savings Bond and Treasury interest, and tax-exempt interest from state or municipal bonds. A $600 threshold applies to certain trade-or-business interest payments outside those standard categories.⁴

Dollar thresholds don’t matter if you withheld federal income tax under backup withholding rules or paid any foreign tax on the interest. In that case you file regardless of the amount.⁵ Interest paid to corporations, tax-exempt organizations, IRAs, HSAs, government agencies, registered securities dealers, and brokers is not reported on Form 1099-INT at all.⁴

Extensions

The two deadlines use two different extension processes, and they are not interchangeable.

Extending the IRS Filing Deadline

Form 8809 gets you an automatic 30-day extension on the IRS filing deadline. File it by the original due date; no explanation is required and the IRS grants the extension automatically for Form 1099-INT.⁶

If 30 days isn’t enough, you can request one more 30-day extension before the first one expires. The second request is not automatic. It has to be submitted on paper and has to include a qualifying reason, such as a federally declared disaster that made records unavailable, serious illness or death of the person responsible for filing, a fire or natural disaster affecting operations, or being in the filer’s first year of existence.⁶

Extending the Recipient Deadline

Form 8809 does not extend the January 31 recipient deadline. A payer who truly cannot deliver recipient copies on time must fax Form 15397 to the IRS Technical Services Operation no later than the due date. If approved, the IRS grants a maximum of 30 extra days. Mail is not accepted; the request has to go by fax.⁷

Penalties for Missing a Deadline

Penalties apply separately to the IRS copy and the recipient copy, so a payer who misses both deadlines on the same form can be penalized twice. The per-form amount climbs the longer the failure stands. For returns due in 2026:⁸

Corrected within 30 days: $60 per form
Corrected after 30 days but by August 1: $130 per form
Corrected after August 1, or never filed: $340 per form
Intentional disregard: at least $680 per form, with no annual cap

Intentional disregard applies when a payer knowingly ignored the filing requirement or deliberately reported wrong information. Every other tier is subject to an annual ceiling that depends on business size.

Payers whose average annual gross receipts for the prior three years exceeded $5 million face annual caps of $683,000 at the 30-day tier, $2,049,000 at the August 1 tier, and $4,098,500 at the after-August-1 tier. Payers at or below $5 million in average annual gross receipts face lower caps of $239,000, $683,000, and $1,366,000 across the same three tiers.⁸

Fixing a Late or Incorrect Form

If you missed the deadline, file as soon as you can; the penalty tier is set by how long the failure runs. If you filed on time but reported the wrong amount or checked the wrong box, prepare a new Form 1099-INT with the correct figures, check the “CORRECTED” box at the top, attach a new Form 1096, and send the corrected copy to both the IRS and the recipient.¹

Errors in the recipient’s name, taxpayer identification number, or the form type itself take two steps. First, file a return that mirrors the original wrong information but shows zero in all dollar amounts, with the “CORRECTED” box checked. That cancels the bad return. Second, file a fresh return with the right information, and do not check the “CORRECTED” box on this one because the IRS treats it as a new original. Both returns go in together under one Form 1096 with the type of correction noted in the bottom margin.¹

Not every mismatch has to be corrected. If the difference between what you reported and the right amount is $100 or less (or $25 or less for withheld tax), the IRS treats it as a de minimis error and no corrected return is required, provided the return was otherwise correct and timely. A recipient can still ask for a corrected statement, and if they do, you should issue one.⁹

1
Internal Revenue Service. General Instructions for Certain Information Returns (2025)
2
eCFR. 26 CFR 301.6109-4 – IRS Truncated Taxpayer Identification Numbers
3
Internal Revenue Service. E-File Information Returns
4
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-INT and 1099-OID
5
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 1099-INT, Interest Income
6
Internal Revenue Service. Form 8809 (Rev. December 2025) – Application for Extension of Time to File Information Returns
7
Internal Revenue Service. Extension of Time to Furnish Statements to Recipients
8
Internal Revenue Service. IRM 20.1.7 – Information Return Penalties
9
Federal Register. De Minimis Error Safe Harbor Exceptions to Penalties for Failure to File Correct Information Returns or Furnish Correct Payee Statements