IRS-Direct 1099-R Filing for Public Pension Systems

Morado is a fully certified IRIS A2A transmitter filing 1099-R, 1099-NEC, and 1099-MISC directly to the IRS through IRIS under its own production TCC. Morado supports the full information return series. You file under Morado's TCC, your team keeps the process in-house, and average processing time is under 10 minutes for 50,000 forms.

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One form, at membership scale

A retirement system's January is the 1099-R. Every retiree, every beneficiary, every refund of contributions gets one. A county or municipal plan files thousands. A statewide system files hundreds of thousands. However many benefit recipients you serve, that is roughly how many 1099-Rs leave your building every January.

Around the core form sits the rest of the mix: 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC out of accounts payable for vendors, contractors, and professional services, and 1042-S for benefit recipients living abroad, which is supported as well.

Your year-end job was built for FIRE

For decades the routine has not changed. Your pension administration system, whether a commercial platform or a mainframe application your team has run for thirty years, executes its year-end job. The job writes an IRS Publication 1220 file. Someone signs into the FIRE portal, uploads it, and saves the receipt.

That routine is ending. The IRS's target date to retire FIRE is December 31, 2026, and IRIS will be the only intake system for information returns in Filing Season 2027 (IRS Working Group Q&A, January 14, 2026).

Here is the part that matters: the file your system produces does not have to change. The system that accepts it does. FIRE took fixed-width Pub 1220 records. IRIS takes XML and validates every record at intake.

What filing through IRIS yourself would take

IRIS is not FIRE with a new login. Filing through the IRIS A2A channel directly means your agency builds and maintains:

• An IRIS TCC. FIRE TCCs do not carry over. An IRIS TCC takes up to 45 days.
• ID.me identity proofing for each responsible official on the application. Individual staff members verify their personal identity through a third-party service.
• X.509 certificates and JWKS key hosting for A2A authentication.
• OAuth2 and mTLS connectivity to the IRS transmission endpoint.
• The IRIS XML schema. Fixed-width Pub 1220 records become nested XML, and the IRS publishes a new schema version every year.
• ATS testing. The IRS assurance testing cycle, repeated annually before production filing.

Each of those is a project for your IT department, a security review, or a procurement cycle. Several are all three.

The free alternative is the IRIS Taxpayer Portal, which caps CSV uploads at 250 records per file (PY2026), with corrections keyed manually. At 100,000 1099-Rs, that is 400 uploads every January.

Morado is the third path. You file under Morado's production transmitter TCC. You skip: the TCC application · ID.me proofing · X.509/JWKS cert setup · annual ATS testing. Nobody on your staff proofs their identity through ID.me, hosts a certificate, or sits an IRS testing cycle.

Start from the file your system already writes

Your year-end job is not wasted work. Morado ingests the Publication 1220 file your administration system already produces and transmits it through IRIS A2A.

If your system writes a Publication 1220 file, Morado ingests it. No re-keying, no vendor template, no rebuild of the year-end job your team already trusts. Spreadsheet and CSV exports work the same way: your team reviews and confirms every mapping before anything transmits.

Replacing the software or service you file with today

Retirement systems reach January in one of three postures: a desktop package like 1099 Pro driving a FIRE upload, a filing service like Sovos or Track1099, or a homegrown process built on the agency's own FIRE TCC.

Morado replaces all three head-on, end to end: ingestion, validation, IRS transmission, corrections, recipient copies, and the audit trail, in one pipeline your team operates. If you file on your own FIRE TCC today, the switch is smaller than it looks. Your file stays the same, and the credentialing burden moves to Morado.

Validation before anything transmits

FIRE checked file format. IRIS checks the contents of every record and rejects at intake.

Morado runs the same rules first, before the IRS sees anything. Every batch is validated against the IRS schema (TIN formatting, address character classes, dollar amount precision) and the IRIS business rules (recipient account uniqueness, payee name controls, transmitter and issuer separation). Issues surface in a report your team can open in Excel, fix at the source, and re-run. No record reaches the IRS without passing preflight.

Retiree files carry decades of data history: name changes, estates and beneficiary records, TINs entered long before anyone validated them. Preflight surfaces those issues in your office in December, not as IRS rejections in February.

Corrections, fully in-house

Pension corrections have their own calendar. Benefit recalculations after year-end. A disability reclassification that changes the taxable amount. An estate that should have received the decedent's final 1099-R.

Morado files corrections through the same IRIS A2A pipeline as originals, with the same validation and the same audit artifacts. Fix the record, and Morado transmits the correction. No separate portal, no manual re-keying.

An audit trail your auditors can walk

Two layers, both retained.

Per batch, six artifacts: the original workbook, canonical JSON, payer configuration, transmitted XML, the IRS submission acknowledgment, and the IRS status response, retained at a stable path.

Per action, a user-level trail: who uploaded, who approved, who transmitted, and when, with self-serve export. Role-based access separates who can prepare, who can approve, and who can transmit.

State auditor ready, IRS exam ready, member dispute ready.

Your cloud or ours

A retiree file is a roster of names, Social Security numbers, and benefit amounts. Where it lives is a policy question before it is a technical one, so Morado runs two ways.

BYOC (bring your own cloud). Morado deploys inside your own cloud environment. Member data never leaves your cloud. For your security review, the data-flow diagram ends at the perimeter your auditors already scoped.

Managed. A dedicated, isolated environment operated by Morado.

Either way, your audit requirements drive the architecture.

Retiree copies, delivered

Every filing generates recipient Copy B PDFs. Retiree populations still expect paper, so Morado prints and mails, or delivers through a secure portal, or both. Same pipeline, same audit trail as the IRS side.

State filing pass-through

Pension distributions carry state withholding, and most states still accept Publication 1220 format for state information return filings while the IRS moves to IRIS XML. Morado generates state filings in the format each state requires, including Combined Federal/State Filing where applicable. One upload, both formats.

Proof: production volume, zero rejections

Morado has filed 94,000+ information returns in production in a single tax year with a 0% IRS rejection rate, and delivered ~188,000 recipient PDFs through a secure cloud portal.

Read the full case study →

(Different industry, same pipeline. Volume and rigor translate.)

How pricing works

Seasonal pricing by volume tier, quoted up front. You know the season's cost before you file, which is the number a budget request needs.

Who Morado works for

• Statewide retirement systems filing 1099-R for six-figure benefit populations
• County and municipal pension plans filing thousands of 1099-Rs alongside AP forms
• Consolidated public plans filing for police, fire, and municipal employee funds under one roof
• State and county finance offices filing 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC for vendors and contractors
• Agencies with their own FIRE TCC today whose credential does not carry over to IRIS

How it works

1. Upload your data. The Pub 1220 file from your administration system's year-end job, or XLSX and CSV from your warehouse or AP system.
2. Confirm the mappings. Morado proposes the mapping; your team reviews, confirms, or overrides before anything moves.
3. Review the preflight report. Every schema and business rule issue, fixable in Excel, before transmission.
4. Morado transmits under its production TCC. Directly to the IRS through IRIS A2A over mTLS.
5. Artifacts land in your audit trail. Acknowledgments, status responses, and retiree copies, retained at a stable path.

See Morado against your January volume

30 minutes with a Morado engineer. Walk through the pipeline against a sample of your real benefit data, anonymized if you prefer.

Book a demo →

Frequently asked questions

Can Morado ingest our existing FIRE (Pub 1220) files? Yes. If your pension administration system writes a Publication 1220 file, Morado ingests it directly, validates it against the IRIS rules, and transmits it through IRIS A2A. Your year-end job does not change. XLSX and CSV exports work too, with mappings your team reviews and confirms.

Can Morado replace 1099 Pro, Sovos, or Track1099? Yes, head-on. Morado covers the full cycle those tools and services cover: ingestion, validation, direct IRS transmission through IRIS A2A, corrections, recipient copies, and the audit trail, operated by your own team. White-glove migration is included when you file with Morado.

Do our staff need ID.me accounts to file through Morado? No. You file under Morado's production transmitter TCC. You skip: the TCC application · ID.me proofing · X.509/JWKS cert setup · annual ATS testing. Nobody on your staff verifies their identity through ID.me or manages IRS credentials.

We file on our own FIRE TCC today. Does it carry over to IRIS? No. FIRE TCCs do not carry over, and a new IRIS TCC application takes up to 45 days plus ID.me proofing for each responsible official. Filing under Morado's TCC removes that entire track.

How does Morado protect retiree data during processing? Deploy BYOC and member data never leaves your cloud, or use a dedicated, isolated environment operated by Morado. Storage is per-project, per-user, with row-level security enforced at the database layer. Logs are scrubbed at the boundary. Every action is attributed: who uploaded, who approved, who transmitted, and when.

Can Morado run inside our own cloud environment? Yes. BYOC deployment runs Morado inside your cloud, so your data never leaves your cloud. The managed alternative is a dedicated, isolated deployment operated by Morado.

Does Morado validate TINs against IRS records? Yes. Real-time TIN validation runs during processing and flags mismatches before filing, in a report your team can fix at the source. Decades-old retiree records are exactly where those issues hide.

How do corrections work after year-end? Corrected returns file through the same IRIS A2A pipeline as originals, with the same validation and audit artifacts. Benefit recalculations, taxability changes, and estate reissues follow the same fix-and-retransmit path, in-house.

What about state withholding and state filing? Morado files through the Combined Federal/State Filing (CF/SF) program, so eligible forms reach participating states with your federal filing. For states and forms outside CF/SF, Morado exports state-ready Pub 1220 files for direct filing. One upload covers both.

Can Morado print and mail retiree copies? Yes. Recipient Copy B PDFs are generated for every filing and delivered through a secure portal, printed and mailed by Morado, or both.

What's the largest filing Morado has handled? 94,000+ information returns in a single tax year, filed through IRIS A2A across roughly 20 production batches with 0% IRS rejections. For the TY2026 season, Morado is on track to file over 2 million information returns across credit unions, universities, public pension systems, and casinos.

What does the FIRE retirement mean for our retirement system? The IRS's target date to retire FIRE is December 31, 2026, and IRIS will be the only intake system for information returns in Filing Season 2027. If your system files through FIRE today, on your own TCC or through desktop software, that path needs a replacement before Filing Season 2027. Read the full transition guide →