TinCheck Coupon: First real-time check free

Deal Highlights

TinCheck is the real-time tax-identity verification service from Sovos, the compliance company that powers tax and regulatory reporting for a large share of the Fortune 500. It checks a name and TIN combination against live IRS records and 20+ global databases before you ever file a 1099, so a wrong number gets caught at onboarding instead of in a penalty notice ten months later.

For a startup paying contractors, freelancers, or international vendors, a single mistyped or mismatched TIN is not a clerical footnote. It is a per-form IRS penalty that stacks, a backup-withholding obligation, and hours of cleanup during the worst possible week of the year. The SaaSOffers TinCheck offer gives you your first real-time check free, so you can validate the highest-risk payee on your books today at zero cost and see exactly what the tool catches.

What Is TinCheck?

TinCheck is operated by Sovos Compliance, LLC. Sovos is not a startup side project. It is one of the largest dedicated tax-compliance providers in the world, handling tax determination, e-invoicing, and information reporting for tens of thousands of businesses including a large portion of the Fortune 500. TinCheck is the self-serve, pay-as-you-go front door to that same verification infrastructure, priced for small teams instead of enterprises.

The core job is IRS TIN and Name matching. You submit a payee's legal name and taxpayer identification number, TinCheck matches the pair against IRS records in real time, and you get back a clear result: match, no match, or a specific mismatch reason. That single check is the difference between a clean 1099 filing season and a stack of CP2100 "B-Notices" from the IRS.

TinCheck does more than TIN matching. The platform also runs:

• EIN Name Lookup and IRS Exempt Organizations database checks
• OFAC and SDN sanctions screening, plus US state watch lists (FBI Wanted, Excluded Parties, and similar) and global sanctions lists (UN, EU, Canadian, and Ukraine-Russia related)
• Death Master File (DMF) screening to flag deceased-individual SSNs
• GIIN verification for FATCA-relevant payees
• USPS Address Validation so the address on the 1099 is deliverable

For a startup, that means one tool covers two compliance jobs at once: it stops a bad 1099 before it is filed, and it stops you from paying a sanctioned or flagged party in the first place.

Why a Wrong TIN Actually Costs You Money

This is the part founders underestimate, so here is the real math, current for 2026 filings.

When you file an information return (a 1099) with a name/TIN combination that does not match IRS records, you are exposed under two separate sections of the tax code at the same time. IRC Section 6721 penalizes the incorrect return filed with the IRS. IRC Section 6722 penalizes the incorrect statement furnished to the payee. The same wrong TIN triggers both. They stack.

The per-form amounts for 2026, per the IRS:

• $60 per form if you correct it within 30 days of the deadline
• $130 per form if you correct it after 30 days but by August 1
• $340 per form if you correct it after August 1 or not at all

Now layer in how TIN errors are actually discovered. The IRS flags name/TIN mismatches and sends you a CP2100 or CP2100A notice, the "B-Notice." Those notices frequently land after August 1. That timing pushes most TIN-mismatch penalties straight into the highest tier. And because 6721 and 6722 both apply, the realistic exposure on a single uncorrected wrong TIN is closer to $680 per payee, not $340.

Run that across a startup paying 30 contractors. If even five TINs are wrong, which is common when payees self-report data into a form, you are looking at roughly $3,400 in stacked penalties, plus the backup withholding problem below, plus the time cost of remediation. The de minimis safe harbor does not save you here. It only covers small dollar-amount mistakes. A wrong TIN is a non-amount error and is explicitly not excused.

There is a second cost. A B-Notice does not just fine you. It obligates you to begin 24% backup withholding on that payee's future payments until the TIN is corrected. That means awkward conversations with contractors, withheld payments, and a manual tracking burden your finance stack was never set up to carry.

TinCheck removes the root cause. A real-time check at onboarding, before the first payment, means the wrong TIN never enters your records, the B-Notice never arrives, and the penalty math never starts.

What You Get With This Offer

Through SaaSOffers, your first real-time TinCheck verification is free. No batch upload, no commitment. You run one live check against IRS records and see the exact result format and reason codes the tool returns.

The practical way to use the free check: pick the single highest-risk payee on your books right now. The international contractor whose EIN you were never sure about. The vendor who filled in their own W-9 in a hurry. The one you have a quiet feeling about. Run that one. If it comes back clean, you have certainty on your riskiest record for $0. If it comes back as a mismatch, you just avoided a $340-to-$680 penalty and a backup-withholding headache for the price of one free check.

After the free check, TinCheck is pay-as-you-go with monthly plans starting at $19.95/month and volume discounts as your payee count grows. There is no enterprise contract and no per-seat licensing. You pay for checks, not for software.

Why TinCheck Fits Startups Specifically

Most startups handle TIN risk in one of two bad ways. They ignore it until a B-Notice arrives, or they use the IRS's own free TIN Matching e-Services portal, which is bulk-only, batch-delayed, requires a multi-step application and an established filing history, and returns a terse coded result with no screening, no address validation, and no sanctions check. Neither approach works for a small team onboarding contractors continuously throughout the year.

TinCheck fits the actual startup workflow: a new contractor signs, you verify them in real time before the first invoice is paid, and you move on. It is the same compliance-grade data the IRS portal uses, wrapped in a usable real-time interface, with sanctions and address checks bundled in, at a price a pre-revenue company can absorb.

It also matters who stands behind the data. TinCheck is Sovos infrastructure. When your check says "match," that result carries the weight of a company whose entire business is being right about tax compliance.

How to Claim

1. Click "Claim Deal" to go to the TinCheck signup through the SaaSOffers link.
2. Create your account. No payment method is required to run the first real-time check.
3. Submit your highest-risk payee's legal name and TIN for a live verification.
4. Read the result. If it is a mismatch, fix the W-9 data before you file, and before backup withholding is ever triggered.
5. If you have more than a handful of payees, move to a monthly plan (from $19.95/month) and verify everyone before 1099 season instead of during it.

Best For

• Startups paying 1099 contractors, freelancers, or agencies, especially those who self-reported their tax data
• Founders who onboard vendors year-round and want verification at signup, not at filing
• Teams paying international or higher-risk parties who also need OFAC and sanctions screening
• Any company that has ever received a CP2100 B-Notice and does not want a second one

Less essential for a company with zero contractor or vendor payments, or one whose payments are entirely run through a payroll or contractor platform that already performs IRS TIN matching on its own.

TinCheck vs the Alternatives

TinCheck vs the free IRS TIN Matching portal. The IRS e-Services TIN Matching program is free but built for established filers, not startups. It is bulk and batch-oriented, requires an application tied to prior filing history, has no real-time single-check flow that fits onboarding, and returns only a match code. It does no sanctions screening, no address validation, no DMF check. TinCheck wins on speed, usability, and scope. The IRS portal wins only on raw price for high-volume, established payers who can wait on batch results.

TinCheck vs Tax1099 / similar filing tools. Filing platforms bundle TIN matching as a feature of a broader e-filing product. That is fine if you have already committed to that platform for filing. TinCheck wins when you want verification decoupled from filing, run at onboarding rather than at year-end, and bundled with sanctions and address checks. It is a verification tool, not a filing tool, and that focus is the point.

TinCheck vs manual or no verification. This is the real comparison for most startups, because most do nothing until a notice arrives. Doing nothing has an expected cost: per-form penalties under 6721 and 6722, backup-withholding obligations, and remediation time. TinCheck's cost is one free check, then dollars per verification. The expected-value math is not close.

Pricing, Plainly

The offer: first real-time check free. After that, plans start at $19.95/month with volume discounts as check volume rises. Pay-as-you-go, no enterprise contract, no per-seat fees. Verify the current numbers on the TinCheck site before relying on them, since pricing can change, but the structure is built for small teams, not procurement departments.

Compare that against a single missed TIN: roughly $340 to $680 per form once 6721 and 6722 stack and the B-Notice lands after August 1. One avoided mismatch pays for years of monthly verification.

The Sanctions Risk Founders Never Price In

The TIN penalty is the obvious cost. The sanctions exposure is the one nobody models, and it is worse.

OFAC enforcement is strict liability. You do not have to intend to pay a sanctioned party. You do not have to know they were on a list. If you send money to a name on the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals list, the violation is the payment itself. Civil penalties run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per violation, and the program is not built to forgive a small company that "did not check." For a startup, a single sanctions hit is not a line item. It is an existential event with legal fees attached.

Most founders assume this only matters for banks or large fintechs. It does not. The moment you pay an international contractor, a foreign agency, or a vendor whose ownership you cannot fully see, you are making a payment that OFAC rules apply to. The probability is low. The cost if it happens is not survivable for a seed-stage company.

TinCheck folds OFAC, SDN, state watch lists, and global sanctions screening into the same check that verifies the TIN. You are not buying two tools. The verification you run to avoid a $340 IRS penalty also screens the payee against the lists that carry six-figure exposure. That bundling is the strongest argument for running every payee through it, not just the ones you are unsure about.

What a Check Actually Looks Like in Practice

Concrete beats abstract. Here is the realistic flow for a startup.

A new contractor signs. Their W-9 says "J. Smith Consulting" with an EIN. You run it through TinCheck before the first invoice is paid. The result comes back: TIN matches, but the name on file with the IRS is "Smith Consulting LLC," not "J. Smith Consulting." That is a mismatch that would have triggered a B-Notice. You fix the W-9 name now, in thirty seconds, while the contractor is still in onboarding and happy to help. No notice. No backup withholding. No penalty.

The alternative timeline without the check: you file the 1099 in January with the wrong name, the CP2100 arrives in late summer, you are now past August 1 in the highest penalty tier, you owe under both 6721 and 6722, and you have to start withholding 24% of that contractor's payments while chasing them for a corrected W-9 they have no incentive to prioritize. Same error. The only variable is whether you caught it at onboarding or the IRS caught it for you.

That is the entire value proposition in one comparison. The check is cheap and early. The notice is expensive and late.

The Bottom Line

A wrong TIN is one of the few startup mistakes that is silent for months and then expensive all at once. It does not show up in a dashboard. It shows up as an IRS notice, a penalty per form, a backup-withholding obligation, and a bad week in February. TinCheck, backed by Sovos, removes the mistake at the source by verifying the name/TIN pair in real time before the payment and before the filing. The SaaSOffers offer makes the first check free, so the cost of finding out whether your riskiest payee is a problem is exactly zero. Run that one check today.

Who Is This Deal For?

Frequently Asked Questions

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