The IRS Built a Business-Specific Online Portal. Here's What You Can Actually Do With It.

The IRS has had an online account for individual taxpayers for a while. In 2024 and 2025 they built a separate one specifically for businesses — and in summer 2026 they added features that make it actually useful.

If your business owes the IRS money, needs a copy of a tax record, wants to verify its EIN information, or just wants to stop spending a morning on hold waiting for a live agent, the IRS Business Tax Account is worth setting up.

What It Is

The IRS Business Tax Account (BTA) is a secure online portal at irs.gov/businesstaxaccount. It’s separate from the individual taxpayer online account and requires authentication through ID.me or the IRS.gov identity system.

In April 2026, the IRS expanded access to cover essentially all entity types:

• Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs (Schedule C filers)
• Partnerships
• S corporations and C corporations
• Tax-exempt organizations
• Government entities

If your business has an EIN, you can generally register. Accountants and tax professionals with a valid Form 2848 (Power of Attorney) or Form 8821 (Tax Information Authorization) on file with the IRS can access the account on the business’s behalf.

What You Can Actually Do There

View your account balance and payment history. If you owe payroll taxes, corporate taxes, or you’re on an installment agreement, you can see the running balance and confirm your payments have posted. Payments through EFTPS can take several business days to post — the BTA shows you where things stand without a phone call.

Make federal tax payments. Pay directly from a bank account through the portal. Same as EFTPS but built into the same interface as your balance and notices.

Download Notice CP575 — no more waiting for a Letter 147C. This is the most useful improvement in the summer 2026 update. When a bank, lender, or financial institution asks for IRS EIN verification, the traditional answer was to call the IRS, explain what you needed, and wait weeks for a Letter 147C to arrive by mail. Now you can download the CP575 — the original EIN assignment notice — directly from the portal. Banks accept it. No hold music required.

Pull tax transcripts. Account transcripts and return transcripts are available through the portal. Useful for business loan applications, due diligence on a potential sale, or verifying what the IRS has on record for prior years. I use transcripts regularly when working through IRS balance issues — they tell you exactly what’s on the IRS’s side of the ledger.

Download digital IRS notices. The IRS is migrating paper correspondence to digital. Certain CP notices — about balances owed, corrections, and adjustments — are now available to download through the BTA as soon as they’re generated, in addition to whatever shows up in your mailbox.

Submit Offer in Compromise payments. The summer 2026 update added the ability to make payments toward an accepted OIC directly through the portal, rather than mailing a check to a specific IRS address. If you’ve already settled a tax debt through an OIC and are making installment payments on the settled amount, this simplifies the process considerably. For more on how OICs work, this post covers the basics.

What It Doesn’t Do

The BTA is an account management and viewing tool. There are real limits.

It doesn’t file returns. Tax returns go through the e-file system or paper filing as always. The portal doesn’t replace that.

It doesn’t submit amended returns. Form 1120-X, 1065-X, or 1040-X still file separately.

It doesn’t resolve audits or active examinations. If you have an open examination, a revenue officer assigned to your account, or a collection matter in progress, those go through the assigned IRS personnel. The BTA will show you the balance but not the examination status.

Not all notices are available digitally yet. Notices generated by specific examination units or specialty programs aren’t always in the digital library. You still need to read your mail.

For serious IRS problems — an IRS lien, an active levy, a trust fund penalty — the BTA is not the resolution tool. It’s a view into your account. The resolution still requires working through the process. Here’s a post on what happens when an IRS situation escalates.

How to Set It Up

Go to irs.gov/businesstaxaccount and click “Sign in.” You’ll authenticate through ID.me, which requires a government-issued photo ID and either a smartphone camera or a video verification call. The first-time process takes 10 to 20 minutes.

Have your business EIN ready. You’ll need information from a recent tax return or IRS notice to verify the business identity.

Once in, the interface is relatively straightforward for an IRS tool. The balance screen is clear, the payment history goes back several years, and the transcript download works reliably.

The Practical Upside

For years, the standard answer to “what does the IRS have on my account” was “call and spend a morning on hold.” That’s changing. The BTA isn’t perfect — the IRS is rolling out features in phases and there are still gaps — but for common tasks like EIN verification, balance checks, transcript pulls, and payment confirmation, it works.

The CP575 download alone is worth setting up the account if you’ve ever had a bank ask for EIN documentation. What used to be a weeks-long process is now a three-minute download.

The IRS has indicated additional features are planned for late 2026, including expanded notice access and eventually online installment agreement management for businesses. Worth keeping an eye on.

This post is for informational purposes only. IRS portal features are subject to change; verify current availability at irs.gov/businesstaxaccount. Reach Geiger Tax & Accounting at (631) 532-5622 or schedule a call for guidance specific to your situation.