Form 15397: Extra Time to Furnish Recipient Statements

Form 15397 is the IRS application for a one-time extension of up to 30 days to furnish recipient statements — the copies of Forms W-2, 1099, 1042-S, 1095, 3921, 3922 and 5498 that go to the payee, not to the IRS. It must reach the IRS on or before the recipient due date, and it does not extend your filing deadline.

That last sentence is the whole point, and it is where most US-connected businesses come unstuck. Form 15397 is an extension to furnish. It is not an extension to file. The two obligations sit in different Code sections, carry separate penalties, and are extended by different applications. A business that faxes Form 15397, breathes out, and then misses its IRS transmittal date has bought itself relief from one penalty while walking straight into another. At Jungle Tax we see this most often in UK-headquartered groups with a US paying entity, where the information-reporting calendar is owned by a finance team that has never had to think in terms of two separate deadlines for the same document.

What Form 15397 actually is

Form 15397, Application for Extension of Time to Furnish Recipient Statements, currently sits at revision 5-2026 under OMB control number 1545-2313. It is a single-page application, plus a page of instructions, through which an issuer or transmitter asks the IRS for additional time to get statements into recipients' hands.

The form is short by design. It asks for the issuer's name and address, a contact, the issuer's nine-digit taxpayer identification number, a count of issuers if you are applying for more than one, a set of tick-boxes identifying the form families involved, and — the only part that carries any real weight — a free-text description of why you need more time. It is signed under penalties of perjury.

The IRS publishes the current form and its instructions directly at irs.gov, and maintains a landing page for the procedure at Extension of Time to Furnish Statements to Recipients. Read the instructions each season rather than relying on last year's memory; this form has been revised repeatedly since it was introduced, and at least one long-standing procedural rule changed in the most recent revision.

Which statements does Form 15397 cover?

The form's own heading defines its scope: Forms W-2, W-2G, 1042-S, 1095, 1097, 1098, 1099, 3921, 3922 and 5498, including the subdivisions within each of those families. Line 4 of the form groups them into tick-boxes:

• 1042-S — the return that matters most to internationally connected payers.
• 1095-B and 1095-C — the ACA statements.
• 1097, 1098, 1099, 3921, 3922 and W-2G — grouped as a single box, so the entire 1099 family travels together.
• 5498, and separately 5498-ESA, 5498-QA, 5498-SA and 5498-TA.
• W-2.

You tick the boxes that apply. You do not write in the number of returns — a genuinely common error that invites a rejection letter at the worst possible moment in the calendar.

Why the furnish/file distinction is not a technicality

Two separate penalty provisions sit behind the same stack of paper. Section 6721 penalises the failure to file a correct information return with the IRS. Section 6722 penalises the failure to furnish a correct payee statement to the recipient. They apply independently and they stack. One late Form 1099-NEC that is neither filed nor furnished on time exposes the issuer to both penalties on the same document.

Both are tiered by how quickly you cure the failure, and both are inflation-adjusted annually. For returns in the current cycle the per-statement figures run in the region of $60 where the failure is corrected within 30 days, roughly $130 where corrected after that but by 1 August, and around $340 thereafter, with annual caps that run into seven figures and scale with gross receipts. Where the IRS asserts intentional disregard, the per-document penalty rises sharply and the annual cap disappears entirely. The current published figures are on the IRS Information Return Penalties page, and the administrative detail sits in the Internal Revenue Manual.

Read those tiers against the 30-day extension and the arithmetic becomes obvious. A granted Form 15397 does not merely soften the section 6722 exposure — it removes it, because the statements are then furnished by the extended due date and there is no failure to penalise. That is a materially different outcome from furnishing 25 days late and paying the first-tier penalty across several thousand statements. For a payer with 4,000 recipients, the difference between a granted extension and a first-tier late-furnishing penalty is on the order of a quarter of a million dollars. The form takes twenty minutes.

Question	Extension to furnish (Form 15397)	Extension to file (Form 8809)
Who receives the document?	The recipient or payee	The IRS
Penalty relieved	Section 6722	Section 6721
Length	Up to 30 days, one time only	30 days; automatic for most forms
Automatic?	No — always discretionary, always reasoned	Automatic for most families; not for W-2 or 1099-NEC
Deadline to apply	By the recipient statement due date	By the IRS filing due date
Earliest you may apply	Not before 1 January	Per form instructions
Confirmation of approval	None issued	Acknowledged through the filing channel

Note the asymmetry in the "automatic" row. Form 8809 gives most form families an automatic 30-day filing extension on request, but Forms W-2 and 1099-NEC were deliberately carved out of that automatic treatment. Form 15397 has no automatic tier at all. Every application is discretionary, and the reasoning on line 5 is the application.

When must Form 15397 be filed?

Three timing rules govern the form, and each one has teeth.

Not before 1 January. The instructions are explicit that you may not file for the coming season in advance. A request lodged in December for the following January's statements is simply out of time in the wrong direction.

By the recipient due date. The application must be filed by the due date of the recipient statement. The instructions state plainly that an extension cannot be granted where the request is filed after the due date. There is no late-application procedure, no reasonable-cause route into the extension itself, and no retrospective grant. This is a hard edge, not a soft one.

By the earliest due date where you combine form types. This is the trap that catches sophisticated filers. You may use a single Form 15397 to cover several form families, but if you do, you must file it by the earliest recipient due date among them. Combine a 1099 request with a 5498 request on one form and the whole application is governed by the 1099 date months earlier. The instructions offer the fix directly: where your due dates diverge, file more than one Form 15397 so that each form family is granted its full 30 days from its own deadline. For a group with W-2, 1099, 1042-S and 5498 obligations, that means treating the application as four separate filings on four separate clocks rather than one tidy submission.

Where a due date lands on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the next business day applies. And do not submit duplicate applications for the same form type — the instructions warn that duplicates may delay or reject processing, which is precisely the outcome an anxious filer sending a "just in case" second fax is trying to avoid.

Which recipient deadlines are you actually working to?

Because the application is due when the statements are, you cannot use the form correctly without the furnishing calendar in front of you. Recipient due dates cluster around 31 January for W-2 and most of the 1099 family, mid-February for certain 1099-B, 1099-S and 1099-MISC boxes, mid-March for 1042-S, early March for the ACA statements, and 31 May or 1 June for the 5498 family — each shifting to the next business day where it falls on a weekend or holiday. Confirm the exact dates each season against the General Instructions for Certain Information Returns rather than a carried-forward internal calendar. Deadlines in this area have moved more than once.

How do you submit Form 15397 in 2026?

Here is the point on which a great deal of published guidance is now out of date. Widely circulated advice still describes Form 15397 as a fax-only procedure. As of the current revision, that is no longer the complete picture. The instructions provide two routes:

• Online. The form may be completed and submitted through the IRS mobile-friendly forms facility, where you search or scroll to Form 15397.
• By fax to the IRS Technical Services Operation, Attention: Extension of Time Coordinator, on 877-477-0572, with 304-579-4105 designated as the international fax line.

The IRS is explicit on one negative: do not submit the request by mail. A posted application is not a filed application, and given that the deadline is absolute, that error is unrecoverable within the extension framework.

For a UK-based issuer the international fax line is the practical fallback, but the online route removes a genuine operational risk. Fax infrastructure in a modern London finance function is often a virtual service with no reliable transmission report, and a transmission report is the only evidence you will ever hold that the application was made on time. Which brings us to the most-missed feature of this procedure.

The IRS will not tell you that you were approved

The instructions state it flatly: approval letters will not be issued. The IRS writes to you only where the request is incomplete or denied. Silence is the approval.

Operationally that is an evidence problem, not a comfort. If a section 6722 penalty notice arrives eighteen months later — and information-return penalties routinely surface long after the season closes — you will need to demonstrate that a timely, complete application was made. Nothing in the IRS's own correspondence will help you do that. Build the file at the time of filing:

• The signed PDF exactly as submitted, with line 5 preserved.
• The fax transmission confirmation, or the online submission confirmation, showing date and time.
• A dated internal note recording who signed, in what capacity, and on what authority.
• The evidence underlying the stated need — the custodian's late data file, the incident report, the correspondence.
• The date the statements were in fact furnished, and by what method.

Retain that bundle for at least as long as the penalty assessment period remains open. It costs nothing at the time and is close to impossible to reconstruct afterwards.

What counts as a good reason on line 5?

Line 5 asks you to describe your need for an extension. Unlike Form 8809, which offers a menu of tick-box hardship grounds, Form 15397 gives you a blank box and no published list of qualifying reasons. That absence is widely misread as meaning the standard is loose. In practice it means the opposite: with no safe harbour to tick, the quality of your drafting is the entire application.

The instructions do give one concrete steer that almost every secondary source omits. They ask you to specify the types of amounts being reported, so that the correct extension deadline can be determined — for example, indicating that a Form 1099-MISC request relates to amounts in boxes 8 or 10, which carry a later furnishing date than the rest of the family, or that Form 5498 relates to contributions. They also ask you to note whether you issue composite recipient statements. Omitting this is the single most likely cause of an application being treated as incomplete, because the IRS cannot work out which deadline it is being asked to extend.

A credible line 5 entry is specific, causal and dated. It identifies what went wrong, when, why it prevents furnishing, and what is being done. Reasons that carry weight in practice include a catastrophic event affecting the issuer's operations or records, the serious illness, incapacity or death of the individual responsible for the filing, a first-year filer establishing a reporting process, and — the most common commercially — a third party on whom you depend for the underlying data delivering it late, such as a custodian, transfer agent, payroll bureau or fund administrator.

Reasons that read poorly are equally predictable. "Volume", "staff turnover", "system migration" and "we are busy" describe ordinary business conditions rather than an impediment, and stated bare they invite a denial. If a system migration genuinely caused the problem, say which system, on what date it failed, what data is unavailable as a result, and when it will be restored. The distinction the IRS is drawing is between a business that has been overtaken by events and a business that has simply run late.

The cross-border position: UK businesses with US reporting obligations

A common and expensive misconception among UK-headquartered groups is that US information reporting is a problem for the US subsidiary alone. It is not. The obligation follows the payment and the payer's status, and a UK entity can be a withholding agent for US purposes without any US establishment at all.

Form 15397 itself acknowledges this in a detail that almost no general guidance picks up. Line 2 does not simply ask for an EIN. It expressly accepts a qualified intermediary EIN, a withholding foreign partnership EIN or a withholding foreign trust EIN — identifiers held exclusively by non-US persons who have assumed US withholding and reporting responsibilities. The form is drafted on the assumption that foreign issuers will use it. The international fax line points the same way, as does the instructions' cross-reference to the withholding-specific guidance in Publication 1187 alongside the general Publication 1220.

The practical exposures we see in UK groups fall into a familiar pattern:

• Form 1042-S. A UK company paying US-source income to foreign persons, or acting as an intermediary in a chain that does, has both a filing and a furnishing obligation, each with its own mid-March deadline and its own penalty. The 1042-S population is usually the smallest and the most likely to be overlooked.
• Equity plans. Forms 3921 and 3922 arise on ISO exercises and ESPP transfers. UK-resident employees of a US parent generate US statements even where no US payroll exists, and the data typically sits with an equity administrator whose year-end file arrives uncomfortably close to the deadline — the textbook line 5 fact pattern.
• Form W-2 for US persons abroad. American citizens and green card holders on a UK payroll frequently require both a P60 and a Form W-2. The two are produced by different teams on different calendars, and the US one is invariably the one that slips.
• Vendor payments. A UK entity making reportable payments through a US paying agent may find the reporting obligation, and the penalty, lands closer to home than expected.

Time zones matter more than they should. A deadline expressed as a US date is not extended by the fact that it is already evening in London. Where a UK team is working to a 31 January or mid-March US furnishing date, the safe internal deadline is the preceding business day, not the day itself. We plan client calendars on that basis as a matter of course; it is a recurring theme in our cross-border tax planning work with UK groups carrying US obligations.

How does this compare with HMRC's approach?

The contrast is instructive, because it explains why UK finance teams so often fail to see the US application coming. HMRC operates no equivalent of Form 15397. There is no application through which a UK employer can obtain more time to issue employee statements.

Feature	United States (IRS)	United Kingdom (HMRC)
Principal recipient statements	W-2, 1099 family, 1042-S, 1095, 3921/3922, 5498	P60, P11D, P45
Application to extend furnishing	Yes — Form 15397	No equivalent application exists
Relief available	Up to 30 days, one time, discretionary	None in advance; reasonable excuse only after the event
Separate penalty for late furnishing	Yes — section 6722, distinct from filing	Penalty regime centred on the return to HMRC
Key employee deadlines	Generally 31 January for W-2	P60 by 31 May; P11D and P11D(b) by 6 July
Confirmation of relief	No approval letter issued	Not applicable

HMRC's own guidance on employer statements is at gov.uk, with the expenses and benefits reporting requirements set out under employer reporting of expenses and benefits. A UK employer that misses 31 May has no application to make; it argues reasonable excuse after the event, if at all. A US issuer that anticipates missing 31 January has a form to file — but only if it files before the deadline it is trying to extend. The instinct carried over from UK practice, that one deals with a missed deadline when it is missed, is exactly the instinct that forfeits the US relief.

What if the deadline has already passed?

Form 15397 is then unavailable. It cannot be filed late and it cannot be granted retrospectively. The position shifts from extension to mitigation, and three things matter.

Furnish immediately. The penalty tiers are driven by elapsed time. Curing within 30 days of the due date holds the exposure at the lowest band; curing by 1 August holds it at the middle band. Every week of delay is quantifiable, so the correct response to a missed furnishing deadline is to furnish, not to deliberate.

Preserve reasonable cause. Section 6724 waives the penalty where the failure is due to reasonable cause and not wilful neglect, and where the filer acted in a responsible manner. This is a genuine defence, but it is evidence-led: contemporaneous records of what happened, when it was discovered, and what was done in response carry the argument. Notes written after the penalty notice arrives carry very little.

Check whether the failure is systemic. An issuer that missed this year's furnishing deadline has often missed earlier ones, and may have unfiled information returns behind it. That is a different and larger problem than one late season, and it interacts with the wider US compliance position of the owners and officers — particularly where those individuals also have unfiled personal returns or unreported non-US accounts. Where that is the picture, the information-return question should not be solved in isolation; our IRS streamlined filing team routinely finds the entity-level and individual-level backlogs are the same backlog viewed from two angles.

A practical filing sequence

1. Establish the true furnishing date for each form family, allowing for weekend and holiday shifts and for the later dates attaching to particular 1099-MISC and 1099-B boxes.
2. Decide the number of applications. One per form family wherever the due dates differ, so that each is granted its full 30 days from its own deadline.
3. Confirm the legal name and TIN match IRS records exactly, as issued on Form SS-4 or on the EIN application. A mismatched name is a routine cause of rejection and there is no time to fix one.
4. Draft line 5 with the cause, the date, the effect and the remediation, and specify the amount types and whether composite statements are issued.
5. Identify the correspondence address. Where an adviser is to receive IRS correspondence, the instructions contemplate entering the client's name, care of the firm, at the firm's address.
6. Have the right person sign — the issuer, transmitter, or a person duly authorised to sign a return, under penalties of perjury.
7. Submit online or by fax, never by post, and capture the confirmation.
8. Diarise the extended date and treat it as immovable. The extension is one-time; there is no second application.
9. Furnish, and record how and when.

One planning note on the wider calendar. As electronic filing thresholds have tightened, the population of businesses obliged to file information returns electronically now reaches well down into mid-sized groups, including UK companies whose US reporting was historically small enough to paper-file. The furnishing obligation is unaffected by how you transmit to the IRS — but a team meeting an electronic filing requirement for the first time is a team whose year-end timetable is under unfamiliar pressure, and that pressure surfaces at the furnishing deadline first. Plan the furnishing date as a separate milestone from the transmittal date, with its own owner.

Where this sits in a wider compliance picture

Form 15397 is a narrow instrument, and it is worth being clear about what it does not do. It does not extend your IRS filing deadline; that is Form 8809, described by the IRS at About Form 8809. It does not cure a prior year's failure. It does not extend state reporting deadlines, which follow their own rules and in several states do not track the federal date at all. It gives you 30 days, once, on a discretionary basis, provided you ask in time and explain yourself properly.

Used well, it is a disproportionately valuable 30 days. For internationally connected businesses in particular — where data crosses borders, custodians and administrators sit in different jurisdictions, and the reporting population is spread across US and UK payrolls — the ability to buy a month at no cost, in exchange for a well-drafted paragraph filed on time, is worth building into the year-end timetable as a standing option rather than an emergency measure. You can read more of our work on US filing obligations across our guides and our US tax services.

Speak to us before the deadline, not after it

If your business has US information-reporting obligations and the statements will not be out on time, the window to act is short and it closes on the recipient due date itself. We prepare and lodge Form 15397 applications for US and UK-based issuers, draft the line 5 reasoning to withstand scrutiny, sequence multiple applications across form families so each secures its full 30 days, and build the evidence file that a silent approval leaves you needing. Where the problem runs deeper than one late season, we deal with the underlying backlog at the same time. To discuss your position in confidence, contact our cross-border team for a discreet, no-obligation consultation.