Form 1096 (officially the "Annual Summary and Transmittal of U.S. Information Returns") is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax form used in the United States used to summarize information returns being sent to the IRS. This form reports non-employee income, deductions, and financial transactions that don’t fall under regular W-2 wages. Information returns are sent by the issuer to recipients as well as the IRS, but Form 1096 is not sent to the recipients. Instead, it is only sent to the IRS.

Paper versus electronic filing

Form 1096 is only used if one is physically filing the accompanying forms with the IRS. If one files the accompanying forms electronically, then Form 1096 is not required. When more than 250 information returns (e.g. Forms 1042-S, 1098,

1099 Year 1099 ( MXCIX) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. Events By place First Crusade * January 16 – The Crusaders, under Raymond IV, count of Toulouse (Raymond of Saint-Gilles), leave Antioch, and he ...

) of a single type are filed for the

calendar year A calendar year begins on the New Year's Day of the given calendar system and ends on the day before the following New Year's Day, and thus consists of a whole number of days. The Gregorian calendar year, which is in use as civil calendar in ...

, one is required to file all forms of that type electronically with the IRS, in which case Form 1096 is not used for that type.

Requirements

Each type of form must be sent with a separate Form 1096. For the purpose of filing Form 1096, variants of certain forms are treated as separate types. For instance with

Form 1099 Form 1099 is one of several IRS tax forms (see the variants section) used in the United States to prepare and file an ''information return'' to report various types of income other than wages, salaries, and tips (for which Form W-2 is used instead ...

, each variant (such as

Form 1099-MISC In the United States, Form 1099-MISC is a variant of Form 1099 used to report miscellaneous income. One notable use of Form 1099-MISC was to report amounts paid by a business (including nonprofits) to a non-corporate US resident independent cont ...

and

Form 1099-K In the United States, Form 1099-K "Payment Card and Third Party Network Transactions" is a variant of Form 1099 used to report payments received through reportable payment card transactions (such as debit, credit, or stored-value cards) and/or set ...

) is treated as a different form. In box 6 on Form 1096, only one box should have an "X" mark in it. Even if only one instance of each form was prepared, Form 1096 must be used. Form 1096 has two separate due dates to the IRS depending on the type of form accompanying the 1096. Form 1096 is due by the end of February each year when used for Forms 1097, 1098, 1099, 3921, 3922 or W-2G, and is due by the end of May when used for Forms 5498. For

Form W-2 Form W-2 (officially, the "Wage and Tax Statement") is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax form used in the United States to report wages paid to employees and the taxes withheld from them. Employers must complete a Form W-2 for each employee ...

, Form W-3 is used instead of Form 1096.

References

1096 Year 1096 (Roman numerals, MXCVI) was a leap year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. Events By place First Crusade * Spring – Peter the Hermit begins his preaching of the First Crusade, traveling from Berry, France, B ...

Personal taxes in the United States {{tax-stub