Collect and track W-9s

Before you begin 

Please review the Setup W-9 collection articles to configure W-9 collection, as well as other features to help improve your tax reporting accuracy.

After you’re all set up

These articles will help you navigate our tax features once they’re enabled.

  1. Collecting W-9 forms from recipients: Understand the required criteria for W-9 collection.
  2. Understanding recipient W-9 collection statuses: Distinguish the different states a W-9 can land in.
  3. Managing the tax review queue: Resolve errors with recipient W-9s right from the dashboard.
  4. Tracking rewards sent outside Tremendous: Include external rewards in your recipient totals.
  5. Maintaining clean tax data: Spot duplicates and ensure accurate recipient reward volumes.

Success looks like: You understand what the recipient experience looks like, can manage rewards that are held for review, and can upload external rewards to improve tracking accuracy.

Collecting W-9 forms from recipients

Recipients see a W‑9 form during redemption when eligibility criteria are met. Completion is required to redeem.

Display criteria

All of the following must be true to prompt a recipient to complete a W-9:

  1. The recipient has reached the reporting threshold for the calendar year for your Tax Entity (tracked by email or External user ID).
  2. W‑9 collection is enabled before redemption.
  3. Redemption occurs with a payout currency of USD.
  4. The recipient has not declared themselves a non-US person in the same tax year.

Timing nuance

  • Payouts are taxable in the year they were sent, regardless of when recipients redeem the payout.
  • Tremendous can only collect W-9 information at the time a recipient redeems their payout.
  • Example: If a recipient exceeds the threshold due to a December payout but redeems in January, you may still have a reporting liability for the year in which you sent the reward. If they don’t redeem it until the next tax year, you may have to collect a W-9 directly from them.
  • Reconcile recipients in your year‑end workflow and consult with a tax professional to understand your obligations.

Notes

  • Since you are required to collect W-9s from recipients who receive more than the reporting threshold (e.g., $600) in a calendar year, you may need to collect W-9s directly from the recipient in cases where Tremendous was unable to do so.
  • Tracking reward totals requires either an email address or external user ID. Physical cards, link rewards, SMS rewards, etc. are not included in this automatic tracking. Be sure to verify all recipient totals during your year-end reconciliation process.
  • Shared emails or multiple emails can distort recipient totals unless you use External user IDs.

Understanding recipient W-9 collection statuses

Note for 2025: We've expanded our tracking beyond just US-based redemptions, so all reward activity now appears in your account regardless of redemption location. 

Once our new tax features are live in your account, you may see some new recipients in your Recipients table who haven't submitted a W-9 yet. This is because these recipients had redeemed some rewards outside of the US.

Once a recipient has received rewards at or exceeding the W-9 collection threshold, they will appear in the Recipients table in your dashboard.

W-9 collection statuses

The Recipients table highlights several W-9 collection statuses:

  • Requested: The recipient has met the threshold for W-9 collection and has an unredeemed Tremendous reward that, when redeemed, will prompt them to complete a W-9.
  • Not requested: The recipient has met the threshold for W-9 collection, but does not have an unredeemed Tremendous reward that would prompt for a W-9.
  • Needs attention: There was an issue with the tax information the recipient provided during redemption. Admin intervention is required. For recipients with this status, please see Managing the tax review queue.
  • Collected: A complete W-9 is on file.

Managing the tax review queue

The tax review queue catches cases where W‑9 data can’t be auto‑validated or needs an admin decision. These cases will appear in your Recipients table with a status of Needs attention.

Before you begin

Why items land in review

  • Non‑US person claim needs confirmation.
  • TIN match limit reached.
  • Service delays or outages.

Managing non-US person claims

After recipients reach the W-9 collection threshold, they must self-report their US-person status. If you've chosen to hold non-US person claims for review, you have two resolution options:

  1. Release pending reward(s): Select this option if you accept the recipient's claim and want to allow redemption. This sends the recipient a notification to redeem again without completing a W-9.
  2. Request W-9: Select this option if you are not satisfied with the recipient's claim and still require a W-9. This sends the recipient a notification prompting them to complete a W-9 before their reward will be released.

Managing TIN match errors

With TIN validation enabled, we limit how many times a recipient can attempt to submit valid W-9 information to prevent fraud. If you've chosen to review invalid TIN matches, you have two resolution options:

  1. Edit manually: If you can contact your recipient and obtain updated information, you can enter it into the dashboard and re-verify it with the IRS. After verification, the W-9 collection status will change to Collected.
  2. Mark as approved: Accept the recipient's provided TIN and mark it as valid without IRS verification. This updates the W-9 collection status to Collected.

After completing either step, you can release any held rewards to the recipient.

Notes

  • There are several reasons why a recipient’s TIN would not match IRS records. You can read about those here.

Tracking rewards sent outside Tremendous

If you paid people outside Tremendous, you can upload those amounts so eligibility and totals are accurate for W-9 collection.

Before you begin

Steps

  1. From the sidebar, go to Taxes → External rewards 
  2. Click Upload rewards
  3. If you haven't already, download the CSV template and open it in your spreadsheet editor of choice
  4. Enter the information for the rewards you wish to upload
  5. Save the document as a CSV file
  6. On the upload form from step 3, select the Tax entity for which this data should be linked to
  7. Click "Click to upload" and select the CSV file you created
  8. Click Upload

Notes

  • The user_id column corresponds to the external user ID you may have set as part of your recipient identifier strategy. If you don't use external user IDs, leave the user_id column blank.

Maintaining clean data

Below are some best practices for keeping your recipient data up to date.

Spotting duplicates

Duplicate recipients can inaccurately inflate recipient reward totals and misroute W‑9 prompts.

Common patterns that generate duplicates

  • Same recipient with multiple emails
  • Shared inboxes (ops@, finance@)
  • Switched identifier strategy mid‑year (email ↔ External user ID)

Practices for resolving duplicates

  • Commit to a recipient identifier strategy for the full tax year.
  • Use reconciliation reports to validate corrections.
    • Review the Order History and Reward History exports to identify recipients who may have used multiple or shared email addresses.
    • You may have directly sent recipients physical cards, which are not tied to specific email addresses and cannot be tracked by external user IDs.
    • Compare the Order History and Reward History reports against the W-9 recipients data export to identify any recipients who received $600+ in a year, whether through email addresses or unique external user IDs.

Moving teams between tax entities

When a team moves from one tax entity to another, we recalculate recipient reward totals to reflect the new structure. As a result, some recipients may newly exceed the W-9 collection threshold and require a W-9.

  • Since these new totals are calculated after redemption, if the recipient does not have an unredeemed reward, they will not automatically be prompted to complete a W-9.
  • You will need to contact these recipients directly to collect their W-9 information, which you can then manually enter in the Recipients section of the dashboard.

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