Who commented on the IRS Form 1099-DA electronic delivery rule

Last updated September 17, 2026

This page reports what the public record contains. It takes no position on whether the proposal should be finalized, and it makes no prediction about what the IRS will do. Counts are as of our pull on September 17, 2026; the underlying comments are public and can be read in full on regulations.gov, docket IRS-2026-0266.

What the rule would do

REG-105064-25, published March 6, 2026 at 91 FR 10983, would let a broker furnish Form 1099-DA statements electronically through an alternative consent process, without offering paper to a customer who does not consent — a departure from the long-standing framework, which requires a paper statement whenever a recipient declines or withdraws consent. The proposal also sets out how brokers give notice, what happens when an email bounces, how quickly a corrected statement must be flagged, and how long furnished statements must be retained. The comment period ran from March 6 to May 5, 2026. A public hearing was held by teleconference on July 8, 2026, with two speakers on the agenda. Our guide to what Form 1099-DA is and what it reports covers the underlying reporting regime.

What we did

On September 17, 2026 we pulled every comment in the docket from the regulations.gov API, along with the proposed rule, the hearing notice and the hearing agenda: 18 comments and 97 attachments. We read every on-topic comment in full, inline text and attachments alike, and coded each one for commenter type, position on the proposal, the specific issues it raised, whether it asked to testify, and length. The coded dataset is published below, and the full method and its limits are set out at the foot of this page.

A disclosure about two of these comments

Who commented

Eighteen comments came from thirteen distinct submitters. Two submitters filed twice — a substantive letter plus an outline of hearing testimony — and one submitter filed four times. Both units are worth having, so both are below.

By comment (n = 18)

By distinct submitter (n = 13)

Shares are rounded to the nearest whole point and do not always total 100. With a base this small, one comment moves a share by about six points in the first table and eight in the second — the counts are the reliable figure.

Nine of the thirteen submitters are businesses or an industry body: four brokers or exchanges, two compliance-software vendors, a trade association, a token issuer and one unattributed filer who describes itself as involved in issuing Form 1099-DA statements. One is a professional firm writing on behalf of taxpayers. Two are individuals — and between them, the two individual taxpayers wrote 238 words. The shortest comment in the docket is ten words long.

Four of the eighteen filings, all from a single submitter, are off topic: they concern an unrelated pension dispute and cite nothing in this rulemaking. Those four carry 80 of the docket’s 97 attachments, which leaves a substantive record of 14 comments and 17 attachments.

What they said

No comment in this docket opposed electronic delivery of Form 1099-DA as such. The one opposing comment objects to the rule as applied to the commenter itself, a non-broker token issuer that argues it is not a broker at all. The one remaining critical comment is a single sentence that cites no provision.

Position on the proposal (14 on-topic comments)

The disagreement is about mechanics. Across the 14 on-topic comments we recorded 123 issue assignments against 35 codes — a mean of 8.8 issues per comment, ranging from one to sixteen. These twelve came up most often.

Most-raised issues (14 on-topic comments)

Shares are of the 14 on-topic comments, so one comment moves a share by about seven points. An issue code records that a comment addressed a topic, not which side it took. The full 35-code list, per comment, is in the downloadable dataset.

Where the record splits

Four provisions drew commenters on both sides. Comment IDs are given so each reading can be checked against the original.

• The seven-year retention period (5 comments). Three want it cut or eliminated — -0004 would align it with the three-year broker standard, -0012 argues it has no statutory basis, and -0016 would match Publication 1220. Two would keep it: -0007 asks only that a secure digital archive suffice, and -0005 supports retention outright.
• The five-business-day corrected-statement notice (5 comments). Four want it extended — -0004 (fifteen days or a reasonableness standard), -0014 (align it to the 30-day undeliverable window), -0016 (ten days, with the clock starting at posting) and -0018. One, -0007, calls it appropriate and administrable as proposed.
• The right to withdraw consent (5 comments). One filer, -0005 (with its testimony outline at -0019), asks that withdrawal be mandatory, arguing from dormant accounts, a taxpayer with a visual impairment and account takeover. Two, -0012 and -0015, endorse dropping it. One, -0016, accepts it as optional but wants the disclosure unambiguous.
• A guaranteed paper option (5 comments). Four ask for one in some form: -0005 (mandatory paper below 200 reportable transactions a year, plus a hardship exception), -0007 (electronic by default, but a clear right to request paper at no cost), -0013 (continued availability for those who need it) and -0003 (a rural-broadband hardship exemption). Against them, -0012 argues that customers who want paper can move to a broker that furnishes it.

One comment argues both sides of the same provision: -0004’s executive summary recommends retaining the separate-consent requirement, while the detailed comment of the same number recommends folding 1099-DA consent into a broader electronic-delivery flow. We coded it as objecting and flagged the inconsistency in the dataset.

What nobody said

Three absences in this record are worth as much as the counts, and all three are simply descriptions of what is not there.

• Nobody asked for a de minimis reporting threshold. The phrase “de minimis” appears nowhere in any of the 14 on-topic comments or their attachments — even though one broker reported issuing more than 56 million Forms 1099-DA for tax year 2025, 53.4% of them covering transactions of $10 or less and 8.5% covering more than $600 (-0007). That volume data was used to argue against paper, not for a small-dollar exemption.
• Accessibility appears in one sentence of one comment. -0005 cites a taxpayer with a visual impairment as a reason to require withdrawal rights. No disability-rights organization, consumer group or legal-aid body filed. The one comment addressing age cuts the other way: -0021 cites an industry study reporting 88% overall support for an electronic-delivery default, and 87% among investors 65 and older.
• No consumer group, taxpayer-advocacy organization, state tax agency or academic filed in this docket.

What the IRS asked for, and what it got

The preamble asks for comment on specific questions in fourteen separate passages, each opening “Comments are requested…”, plus a general request for comment on all aspects of the proposed rules. Engagement with those questions was uneven.

Each row is matched to the issue code that records engagement with that subject, so the count is of comments that addressed the topic, not of comments that answered the question as posed. The code assignments are in the downloadable dataset.

The gap is at the bottom of that table. Several of the preamble’s questions go to brokers that operate physical terminals or kiosks and to processors of digital asset payments, and ask directly whether those customers ever visit the broker’s online platform. Two comments answered, and only one filer writes as a payment-processor broker. No kiosk operator filed.

The record also went where it was not asked to go. The provision that drew the most objections — the requirement that a customer’s consent relate solely to the 1099-DA statement and be separate from any other consent — is not among the preamble’s express requests for comment.

Six of the fourteen on-topic comments asked for something the preamble says it will not take up here: a single framework across all Forms 1099. The preamble routes that question to Notice 2026-4 and states that comments on 1099-B statements or other payee statements “will not be considered or incorporated into any final regulation that results from these proposed regulations.” The Notice 2026-4 docket has 8 comments.

In the commenters’ words

Quotations are attributed by commenter type and comment ID, each linked to the public record. We do not name commenters; see the method note below.

Broker or exchange — -0004

In the digital asset context, a single Form 1099-DA (or substitute statement) can easily span hundreds of pages. A requirement to print and mail the entire statement creates an outsized penalty for a minor data quality issue (an outdated email address).

Compliance software vendor — -0006

If brokers have to build different consent procedures for different Form types, then they simply will default back to the existing § 31.6051-1(j) and Publication 1179 standards. This will render the proposed regulations less useful to them.

Compliance software vendor — -0012

Section 6045 — the statute under which Form 1099-DA reporting is required — contains no retention requirement of any kind. … It is the creation of a brand new obligation out of whole cloth, imposed on electronic furnishers but not on paper furnishers, with no explanation of why it is necessary.

Trade association — -0021

The suggestion in the preamble that customers of digital asset brokers are unique in their sophistication with respect to electronic communications is not well supported.

Unattributed industry filer — -0015

A 1099-DA statement disclosing large proceeds alongside a full name and home address could provide bad actors with the equivalent of a treasure map for targeting individuals, particularly if the electronic statement is intercepted via email compromise or account breach.

This filer’s ask — permitting truncation of the recipient’s name and address on the electronic statement — is the only one in the docket no other commenter raised.

Broker or exchange — -0014

The final rules should align with current customer practices, not outdated assumptions from 2002.

Tax professional firm — -0005 (our founder’s own letter — see the disclosure above)

Electronic delivery of an unstructured PDF is not meaningfully better than paper. Electronic delivery of standardized structured data transforms the reporting regime.

Individual taxpayer — -0002 (the comment in full, all ten words)

This rule is complex and doesn’t make [i]t easy for Americans

The original runs two words together — “doesn’t makeIt easy”. We have separated them in brackets rather than silently fixing the text.

For reporters

• Eighteen comments were filed on the IRS proposal to let digital asset brokers deliver Form 1099-DA electronically with no paper alternative, and not one opposed electronic delivery itself.
• Four of the eighteen are off topic — one submitter filed four times, with 80 of the docket’s 97 attachments, about an unrelated pension matter. The substantive record is 14 comments.
• Two individual taxpayers commented, and wrote 238 words between them. The shortest comment in the docket is ten words long.
• Nine of the thirteen distinct submitters are businesses or an industry body — four brokers or exchanges, two compliance-software vendors, a trade association, a token issuer and one unattributed industry filer.
• The provision drawing the most objections is one the preamble never asked about — five of the fourteen on-topic comments object to the requirement that consent relate solely to Form 1099-DA and be separate from every other consent.
• The public hearing, held by teleconference on July 8, 2026, had two speakers (hearing agenda).

For scale: the IRS’s original digital asset broker-reporting proposal (REG-122793-19, docket IRS-2023-0041) drew 44,821 comments. This follow-on rule drew 18. Both figures come from the same regulations.gov API, pulled the same day.

Questions about the coding, or a figure you want checked, reach us at our contact page.

Download the coded data

Download the coded data (CSV, 18 rows) — one row per comment, with these columns:

• comment_id — the regulations.gov comment ID, e.g. IRS-2026-0266-0004
• regulations_gov_url — link to the public record of that comment
• date_received — date the agency received it
• date_posted — date it appeared on regulations.gov
• commenter_type — one of eight coded types — no names, no organizations
• position — support_with_changes, oppose, critical_unelaborated or none_offtopic
• on_topic — whether the filing addresses this rulemaking at all
• is_hearing_outline — whether the filing is an outline of oral testimony
• attachment_count — number of attachments filed with the comment
• word_count — extracted words, inline text plus attachments
• issue_count — number of issue codes assigned
• issue_codes — the issue codes themselves, pipe-separated

No commenter is named in the file. It records commenter type, never identity — including for the individuals who filed. The comments themselves are public records: anyone can open the linked docket record and read the original, signature and all.

Terms. Free to use, quote and republish, including commercially, with credit to Digital Asset Tax Action and a link to this page. The underlying comments are United States government records and are not ours to license. If you find an error in the coding, tell us and we will correct it with a dated note, in line with our editorial standards.

Method

On September 17, 2026 we pulled every comment in docket IRS-2026-0266 from the regulations.gov API, along with the proposed rule, the hearing notice and the hearing agenda. That was 18 comments and 97 attachments. We downloaded and read every attachment on the 14 on-topic comments and extracted the text; one image-only PDF was read by optical character recognition, and quotations from it were checked against the page images. Each comment was coded on five dimensions: commenter type, position on the proposal, the issues it raised, whether it asked to testify, and length in words. Issue codes were added as new issues appeared in the comments rather than fixed in advance, which is why there are 35 of them; the starting list came from the proposal’s own structure.

Comments are classified off topic only when the filing addresses a different matter entirely. The four here share one submitter and one subject — an unrelated pension dispute — and cite nothing in this rulemaking.

Limitations

Read these before quoting any percentage from this page.

• Eighteen comments is a small record, and only fourteen are on topic. One comment moves a percentage of the on-topic set by about seven points. We print counts next to every share for that reason. This is not a sample of anything: it is the whole docket as of our pull date, and it supports “here is what the record contains,” not “here is what the industry thinks.”
• Eighteen comments came from thirteen submitters. Two filed both a letter and a hearing outline; one filed four times. Where the unit matters, both counts are shown.
• An issue code records that a comment addressed a topic, not which side it took. Where commenters disagreed, we say so and give the comment IDs.
• The off-topic classification rests on a sample. Four of the eighty attachments on those filings were downloaded and searched; none mentions Form 1099-DA, digital assets, brokers, section 6045 or REG-105064-25. The remaining seventy-six were not extracted, though their titles are consistent with the four.
• regulations.gov posts on a lag, and the docket accepts late filings. One comment here was received four months after the comment period closed. Counts are as of September 17, 2026 and could change.
• Word counts are extraction artifacts. They include letterhead, footnotes and page furniture, and the longest comment’s total is inflated by seven PDFs sharing the same boilerplate.
• Hearing requests may be undercounted. The hearing notice directs requests to an IRS email address, so a request that was emailed and never filed in the docket would not appear here.
• Coding was done by one analyst, with no second-rater check — and, as disclosed above, that analyst is a filer in the docket. The per-comment coding is published so any disagreement can be located and argued with.

This page is educational and does not constitute tax or legal advice for your specific situation. For questions about your own filings, consult a qualified tax professional.