Two Forms That Are New in Your Mailbox This January: 1098-VLI and 1099-DA

# Two Forms That Are New in Your Mailbox This January Most years, the January mail is the same envelopes with different numbers. This year it is not. One form files for the first time, one form changes shape, and one familiar form may simply not arrive at all. The through-line is worth naming up front: each of these changes takes a number you already knew and makes it a number the **IRS can now match against**. That shifts when the reconciliation has to happen — from after a notice to before you file. ## Form 1098-VLI — the Vehicle Loan Interest Statement Brand new, and 2026 is the first **mandatory filing year**. Lenders issue Form 1098-VLI to borrowers who paid more than **$600** of interest during the year on a specified passenger vehicle loan. It substantiates the car loan interest deduction on Schedule 1-A Part IV. If you bought a car in 2025 and expected a form last year, you probably did not get one. For the 2025 tax year lenders only had to *make the total available* to the borrower by January 31, 2026 — which in practice meant a letter, a portal line item, or a statement footnote. This year it is an actual information return, filed with the IRS. **What to check:** that the interest total covers only the qualifying loan, and that you have the **VIN** — Schedule 1-A Part IV asks for it. Remember the underlying conditions are narrow: new vehicle, US final assembly, under 14,000 lbs GVWR, personal use, first lien, loan originated after December 31, 2024. ## Form 1099-DA — now with cost basis Form 1099-DA is not new, but the 2026 version is materially different from the 2025 one. For 2025 transactions, brokers reported **gross proceeds only**. Cost basis was optional, and a transition period with penalty relief covered good-faith errors. For 2026, digital assets acquired on or after **January 1, 2026** and held with the broker are **covered securities** — so basis reporting is mandatory, and the form that arrives in early 2027 carries a basis figure the IRS sees. **What to check:** reconcile the broker's basis against your own records before it flows to Form 8949. Transferred-in lots and pre-2026 acquisitions can still arrive with missing or incorrect basis, and a wrong number on an information return is not a private disagreement — it is the version of your finances the IRS starts from. ## Form 1099-NEC — two changes at once The 2026 Form 1099-NEC gained boxes for **cash tips**, the **Treasury Tipped Occupation Code** and **qualified overtime compensation**, so contractors now get the same Schedule 1-A substantiation employees get on the W-2. If you drive, deliver, style hair, tutor, or shoot events as a 1099 contractor, that is the box that makes your tips deduction claimable. Separately, the general reporting threshold rose. For payments made in **2026** it is **$2,000**, up from $600 for earlier payments. **What to check:** the form you used to receive may simply not show up. The income is reportable either way. Reconcile against your own invoices, not against the envelopes in your mailbox — the absence of a form is not the absence of income, and the higher threshold makes that mismatch far more common this year than last. ## And the W-2, while we are here Three new Box 12 codes — **TA**, **TP**, **TT** — and a new **Box 14b** for the tipped occupation code. Two of the three codes report money already inside Box 1; one reports money that was excluded from it. We [broke that down separately](https://w2extractor.com/tools/w2-box-12-decoder). ## The January habit worth building Every one of these forms is the government-visible version of a figure you already had. That makes the week each one arrives the cheapest possible moment to catch an error — payroll can still issue a corrected W-2, a lender can still fix a 1098-VLI, a broker can still amend a 1099-DA. By April, everything is more expensive. Our [2026 tax form changes reference](https://1099parser.com/tools/new-2026-tax-forms) lists what changed on each form, when it arrives, and the one thing worth checking the moment it does. *General information, not tax advice.*