When Are Tax Documents Required to Be Sent Out?

Most tax documents are required to be sent out by January 31 of the year after the tax year they cover. Investment forms like the 1099-B get until February 15, Schedule K-1s follow the entity’s filing deadline in March or April, and Form 5498 for IRA contributions doesn’t go out until May 31. For the 2025 tax year, January 31, 2026 falls on a Saturday, so the main deadline shifts to Monday, February 2, 2026.¹

Forms Due to You by January 31

Your employer, financial institutions, government agencies, and most other payers share the same deadline. By January 31 you should have:

Form W-2 from your employer, reporting wages, tips, and taxes withheld.²
Form 1099-NEC from any business that paid you $600 or more as an independent contractor.³
Form 1099-MISC for most payment types, including rent, royalties, and prizes.³
Forms 1099-INT and 1099-DIV from banks and brokerages, reporting interest and dividends.⁴
Form 1099-R for distributions from pensions, annuities, retirement plans, and IRAs.⁴
Form 1099-G from government agencies, covering unemployment compensation and state or local tax refunds of $10 or more.⁴
Form 1095-A if you had Marketplace health coverage. You need it to reconcile any premium tax credits on your return.⁵
Form 1098 from your mortgage lender, showing interest paid during the year.
Form 1098-T from colleges and universities, reporting tuition payments used to claim education credits.⁶

When January 31 falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or a legal holiday in the District of Columbia, every deadline above shifts to the next business day.¹ That is why forms for the 2025 tax year are not technically late until February 2, 2026.

Forms Due to You by February 15

A smaller set of investment-related forms gets two extra weeks:

Form 1099-B reports proceeds from sales of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other securities. Brokerages have until February 15 because computing cost-basis information across many transactions takes additional time.⁴
Form 1099-MISC with only boxes 8 or 10 completed. When the form reports only substitute payments in lieu of dividends, or gross proceeds paid to an attorney, the deadline is also February 15 rather than January 31.⁴

The weekend-and-holiday rule applies here too. If February 15 lands on a Saturday or Sunday, payers have until the following Monday.

Schedule K-1s: March 15 or April 15

If you are a partner in a partnership, a shareholder in an S corporation, or the beneficiary of a trust or estate, your Schedule K-1 arrives on a different timeline. The deadlines track the entity’s own tax-return due dates.

Partnerships (Form 1065) and S corporations (Form 1120-S) must send K-1s by March 15.
Trusts and estates (Form 1041) must send K-1s by April 15.

April 15 is also when your individual return is due, which leaves no room to file on time if you are waiting on a trust or estate K-1. Even a March 15 K-1 is tight. If you expect one, requesting a six-month extension with Form 4868 is the practical move. The extension pushes your filing deadline to October 15, but any tax you owe is still due April 15.⁷

Form 5498 for IRA Contributions: May 31

Your IRA trustee or custodian has until May 31 to send Form 5498, which reports contributions made to your IRA during the year and through the April 15 filing deadline.⁸ The late date is built into the rules. Because you can make IRA contributions for a tax year all the way up to the April filing deadline, the form cannot be finalized before that window closes. You usually do not need Form 5498 to file your return, since you already know what you contributed. Keep it for your records so you can verify what your custodian reported to the IRS.

When a Form Is Late or Missing

If a deadline has passed and nothing has arrived, start with the easy checks. Look at your physical mailbox, your online account portals, and your email spam folder if you opted into electronic delivery. Forms go missing for ordinary reasons: an old address on file, an email filtered as junk, or a portal login you forgot you set up.

Next, contact the payer directly. A call or email to the employer, brokerage, or agency usually resolves it. They can resend a paper copy, reissue electronic access, or confirm whether a form was required at all.

If you still have nothing by the end of February, call the IRS at 800-829-1040. Have your name, address, Social Security number, dates of employment, and the payer’s contact information ready. The IRS will reach out to the payer on your behalf.⁹ If that still does not produce the form, the Taxpayer Advocate Service is an independent office within the IRS that helps people facing significant difficulty resolving tax issues.¹⁰

Corrected Forms

Sometimes a form arrives on time but with wrong numbers. The payer then issues a corrected version: a Form W-2c for W-2 errors, or a 1099 marked as corrected for 1099 errors. The corrected form replaces the original, and you file using the updated figures.¹¹

There is no set deadline for corrections. Payers are instructed to issue them as soon as they discover an error, which can be days or months after the original went out.¹¹ If you know a correction is coming, wait for it before filing. If you have already filed and later receive a corrected form that changes your income or withholding, amend your return with Form 1040-X.¹²

What Happens to Issuers Who Miss the Deadline

Employers and payers who send forms late or with errors face per-form penalties from the IRS, tiered by how quickly they fix the problem:¹³

Corrected within 30 days of the deadline: $60 per form
Corrected after 30 days but by August 1: $130 per form
Not corrected by August 1 or not filed at all: $340 per form
Intentional disregard: $680 per form

These are the inflation-adjusted amounts for 2026; the statutory base figures are lower, and the IRS updates them annually.¹⁴ Annual caps apply as well: $500,000 for 30-day corrections, $1,500,000 for corrections by August 1, and $3,000,000 for uncorrected failures. If a former employer or payer is dragging on your form, mentioning that per-form penalties apply can sometimes move things along.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 509 (2026), Tax Calendars
2
Social Security Administration. Deadline Dates to File W-2s
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC
4
Internal Revenue Service. General Instructions for Certain Information Returns (2025)
5
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 1095-A
6
Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers About Health Care Information Forms for Individuals
7
Internal Revenue Service. File an Extension Through IRS Free File
8
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 5498, IRA Contribution Information
9
Internal Revenue Service. What to Do When a W-2 or Form 1099 Is Missing or Incorrect
10
Internal Revenue Service. Who May Use the Taxpayer Advocate Service?
11
Social Security Administration. Helpful Hints to Forms W-2c/W-3c Filing
12
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 1040-X (Rev. December 2025)
13
Internal Revenue Service. Information Return Penalties
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6722 – Failure to Furnish Correct Payee Statements