IRS IRIS information-return filing. XML transmissions, receipts, and corrections.
The IRS is retiring FIRE after 31 December 2026, and IRIS becomes the sole intake system for covered information returns from 1 January 2027. A8 Core™’s strategic filing interface is IRIS A2A: authenticated REST endpoints carrying IRS-schema XML, with processing-year validation, receipts, acknowledgements, corrections, replacements, and evidentiary history.
The filing pipeline
Filing is a workflow with evidence at every step, and the payload is IRS-schema XML rather than a fixed-width file.
Generate
IRS-schema XML produced from the same records that produced the recipient forms, validated against the schema for the filing year.
Validate
Structural, schema, and business-rule validation for the processing year before anything transmits.
Transmit
Authenticated REST POST to the IRIS A2A endpoint for the institution’s environment, under its own credentials.
Acknowledge
Receipts and acknowledgements retained against each submission, with the transmission history kept as evidence.
Correct or replace
Corrections and replacements generated as their own submissions, tied to the original transmission.
The IRIS control plane
Filing identity is configuration, held per institution and per environment. A8 Core™ stores references, never shared secrets in the clear.
Transmitter Control Code
The governing custodian’s own TCC, held in that custodian’s configuration. A8 Core™ does not file under a platform code.
API Client ID and credentials
Registered per custodian and per environment as part of that custodian’s integration configuration — so no custodian files under another’s identity, and test and production paths cannot be confused.
Consent and signed assertions
Recorded consent and signed JWT assertions, with the JWK material held as a scoped vault reference.
OAuth access tokens
Short-lived tokens obtained per transmission session rather than stored credentials.
Environment
Assurance Testing System and production kept separate, with the environment recorded on every submission.
ATS evidence
Certification artefacts retained as part of the filing record, not as a one-off checklist.
Two things worth stating plainly
Both are commonly assumed the other way round.
IRIS A2A is not SOAP
Processing Year 2026 Publication 5718 defines REST POST operations carrying XML request and response payloads. An integration written against a SOAP assumption will not work.
Filing is versioned by year
Schemas, business rules, and endpoints change by filing year, so A8 Core™ preserves each year’s version and keeps historical submissions reproducible.
What happens to FIRE
FIRE support narrows to transition work rather than disappearing: prior-year filings, corrections to files already transmitted, and retention of the evidence for both. See the FIRE sunset and transition page.
Build on the account operating system.
See how this module fits your institution’s account, custody, and operations model.