IRS Pilot Program to Mask Payee TIN for Paper 1099’s

December 30 2009

For the calendar years 2009 and 2009 the IRS is allowing the masking of a Payee’s TIN, SSN, and IRS ITIN for 1099 paper filers.  This is a pilot program and the notice of this program can be located at www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-09-93.pdf.  The allows the filer to print only the last 4 digits of the payee number.

The purpose behind masking the Payee number is to help prevent identity theft.  This program does not apply to electronic filers due to the fact, a file being transmitted will be encrypted.

To use this pilot program of masking the payee number the following requirements must be met:

• The number used on the 1099 must be either a SSN, IRS ITIN or IRS adoption TIN number.  All of these are 9 digit numbers in the 000-00-0000 format
• The format on the 1099 should be 5 *’s or 5 x’ and then the last four digits.  Example ***.**.1234 or XXX.XX.1234
• This only applies to the Form 1098 series, Form 1099 series or Form 5498 series for calendar year 2009 or 2010