id.me and TIN matching application

Feb 08, 2026 Last reply: 5 months ago 1 Replies

One of the organizations I work for is going to pay nonemployee compensation. Since I'll need to collect the SSN and issue the 1099-NEC, I have a reason to use the TIN matching application.



When I give annual notice on 990-N, I use credentials established with login.gov, but that has not been expanded to other IRS databases.



While highly intrusive, the process to set up an account with id.me wasn't awful. I did have to go back into the portal to classify the email address I used as "work" although I wasn't sure if that was an IRS requirement.



Submitting the application to register in the TIN matching application was far more annoying. I had to try multiple times to link the individual login credentials with the organization that will be the payee for this purpose. We'll see how quickly the application gets approved.


I played with it earlier, using my own SSN and the EIN of one of my organizations. The pattern matching is minimal, just last name of a person or first key word in a business name.

It's not a lookup tool if either name or TIN are missing.

The lookup is EIN, SSN, or check both. In the latter case, if there's a match found, the system doesn't reveal if it's SSN or EIN.

They didn't list result codes if the TIN is ITIN or ATIN, which a payor of interest would need to know. I have no idea if they verify a match with those TINs.

I'm in the 96 hour penalty box for repeating the same lookups!

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