How to read the counts
Publication 6961 is the Statistics of Income Division's annual forecast of information and withholding documents, used to plan IRS campus workload. A count is the number of documents the IRS received or expects to receive in a calendar year, so the 2024 column is mostly tax year 2023 forms filed in early 2024, and the 2026 projection is the tax year 2025 forms being filed now. The grand total (4,637,956,645 documents in 2024, 5,209,293,200 projected for 2026) includes Form 1096 transmittals and the Social Security Administration's own benefit statements; it excludes Forms 5471, 5472 and 8027, and does not yet list Form 1099-DA. The September 2025 edition notes that the 2025 tax law's effects are not yet in the projections except for the 1099-K, where the restored $20,000 and 200-transaction threshold is already reflected.
Publication 6961 (Rev. 9-2025), Table 2.
Two things the table shows at a glance. Paper is over: 3,964,231 paper documents in 2024 against 1,050,000 projected for 2026, and most form types show zero paper at all; what remains is Schedules K-1, a residue of Forms 1042-S and 1096 transmittals. And the growth is in brokerage: Form 1099-B alone was 3.24 billion documents in 2024 and is projected at 5.54 billion by 2033, which is why the grand total climbs while the forms most payers file (NEC, MISC, INT, DIV) barely move.
The forms that matter to payers
| Form | 2024 actual | 2026 projected | 2033 projected | What drives the count |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1099-NEC | 54,619,668 | 61,471,500 | 68,272,200 | Contractor payments. The $2,000 threshold for 2026 payments (Pub. L. 119-21) is not yet in the IRS projection, so the 2027 count may come in lower than shown. |
| 1099-MISC | 38,300,429 | 39,616,900 | 56,370,600 | Rents, royalties, prizes, medical and legal payments; the IRS projects steady growth. |
| 1099-K | 12,866,267 | 13,340,100 | 15,880,400 | Payment card and platform settlements at the restored $20,000 and 200-transaction threshold. The 2023 ETAAC report had anticipated tens of millions more at $600. |
| W-2G | 27,557,876 | 32,777,300 | 43,409,500 | Gambling winnings. The slot and bingo threshold was $1,200 from 1977 through 2025 and is $2,000 for 2026 payments under P.L. 119-21; the IRSAC's January 2026 report asked for $4,000. The projections predate the change. |
| 1042-S | 14,303,713 | 15,492,800 | 21,072,300 | Payments to foreign persons; the fastest-growing form payers file, about 47 percent over the projection period, and still 80,774 on paper in 2024. |
| 1099-INT | 214,680,384 | 212,596,500 | 162,290,900 | The one large form the IRS projects to shrink over the period. |
| 8300 | 345,426 | 455,600 | 507,900 | Cash over $10,000; e-filing required since January 2024 for businesses that must e-file other information returns. |
Forms 945, 1042 and 941: the withholding returns
Publication 6292 forecasts the tax returns rather than the information returns. Three of them are the returns on which withholding reported on information returns is paid over, and the counts are small enough to be striking: in fiscal year 2024 the IRS received 50,669 Forms 945, which is, in effect, the number of payers that reported any nonpayroll withholding (backup, pension or gambling) for the year. TIGTA counted 182,075 payers with missing or incorrect TINs on tax year 2018 returns who should have withheld (see the TIGTA findings page); the 945 count is a fraction of that, which is the gap the IRS's Form 945 matching program exists to close.
| Return | FY 2024 filed | of which paper | FY 2026 projected | of which paper | FY 2032 projected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form 945, Annual Return of Withheld Federal Income Tax | 50,669 | 41,127 (81%) | 50,400 | 36,300 (72%) | 39,500 |
| Form 1042, Annual Withholding Tax Return for U.S. Source Income of Foreign Persons | 68,049 | 39,991 (58%) | 71,700 | 12,700 (17%) | 85,800 |
| Forms 941, 941-PR and 941-SS | 26,828,731 | 9,212,183 (34%) | 27,361,100 | 7,581,000 (27%) | 28,491,000 |
Form 1042 flips from paper to electronic in the projection because T.D. 9972 requires it to be e-filed from 2025 (for 2024). Form 945 has no e-file mandate and the IRS expects about seven in ten to arrive on paper in 2026; the IRSAC asked in 2022 for the 945-X to be added to Modernized e-File and ETAAC's 2026 report still lists every amended employment tax return as paper only. Source: Publication 6292 (Rev. 9-2025), Table 1.
The Data Book series: returns received, matching and penalties
The IRS Data Book (Publication 55-B) reports each fiscal year what the information returns were used for. Its Information Reporting Program table (Table 24 through the 2024 edition, Table 3-8 in the 2025 edition) gives the documents received and the two programs that run on them: the Automated Underreporter, which matches 1099s and W-2s to individual returns and proposes tax, and the Automated Substitute for Return, which builds returns for nonfilers from their 1099s. Its civil penalty table does not break out information return penalties; they sit inside a 'nonreturn penalties' line with return preparer, trust fund recovery and other penalties, which is the line shown here. The IRSAC asked in 2024 for the 6721 and 6722 figures to be published separately; they have not been.
| Fiscal year | Information returns received | of which paper | AUR cases closed | AUR assessments | Nonreturn penalties assessed | Nonreturn penalties abated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2019 | 3,503,499,195 | 33,030,902 | 1,968,731 | $6.7 billion | $6.3 billion | $1.9 billion |
| FY 2020 | 3,409,192,789 | 9,466,337 | 942,155 | $3.9 billion | $4.9 billion | $1.1 billion |
| FY 2021 | 4,740,647,278 | 2,747,787 | 2,362,596 | $10.3 billion | $7.4 billion | $2.3 billion |
| FY 2022 | 5,451,479,333 | 27,238,796 | 1,582,131 | $8.7 billion | $4.7 billion | $3.2 billion |
| FY 2023 | 5,419,271,793 | 42,738,528 | 1,019,050 | $6.6 billion | $4.3 billion | $1.9 billion |
| FY 2024 | 4,567,821,438 | 2,607,181 | 1,151,873 | $7.7 billion | $4.6 billion | $2.9 billion |
| FY 2025 | 4,474,519,835 | 885,323 | 987,460 | $5.9 billion | $5.0 billion | $2.4 billion |
Money amounts are the Data Book's, in thousands of dollars converted to billions. Three cautions from the tables themselves. The 2025 Data Book says its paper count 'may not be comparable to prior years' because Submission Processing changed how it tracks paper. The 'other' category (about 275 million documents a year) is forms the Social Security Administration processes, so the 'received' total is not the same population as Publication 6961's grand total. And the fiscal year 2025 civil penalty totals ($1,247 billion assessed, $1,210 billion abated) are dominated by employment tax delinquency and failure-to-pay penalties assessed and abated in the same year ($1,150 billion of each); the Data Book prints them without comment, and this page reports them as printed. Trust fund recovery penalty credits of $738.9 million are included in the fiscal year 2025 abatements.
The figures guide puts these tables next to the tax gap research and explains what the trend in each means for a payer.
Questions people ask
Are these the tax year counts?
No. Publication 6961 counts documents received in a calendar year, which are mostly the prior tax year's forms plus late and corrected filings from earlier years. The 2024 column is, roughly, tax year 2023.
Where is Form 1099-DA?
Not in Publication 6961's September 2025 tables. The IRSAC's 2024 report cited a Tax Notes account of IRS preparations for up to eight billion Forms 1099-DA a year once digital asset broker reporting begins, which would dwarf every other form but the 1099-B; the first filing season was 2026 (for 2025 gross proceeds).
Why does the IRS receive fewer returns than Publication 6961 projects?
They measure different things: 6961 counts documents filed with the IRS and the SSA by calendar year; the Data Book counts documents the IRS processed in its fiscal year (October to September), and the Data Book's 'other' line is only part of what the SSA handles. Neither is wrong; do not add them together.
How often are these updated?
Publication 6961 and 6292 are revised each September; the Data Book appears in the spring for the previous fiscal year. This page carries the September 2025 projections and the Data Book through fiscal year 2025, and is refreshed when the next editions appear.