The IRS Quietly Upgraded Its Free Business Account — Here’s What It Can Now Do

The IRS doesn’t get much credit for good software, but its Business Tax Account (BTA) — a free, self-service portal for managing your federal tax info online — just got a meaningful upgrade. In its Summer 2026 release (fact sheet FS-2026-11), the agency added features that solve some genuinely annoying small-business chores: getting an EIN verification letter for the bank, reading IRS notices online instead of waiting for the mail, and scheduling tax payments without enrolling in the old EFTPS system.

What happened

The IRS expanded what business owners can do inside the BTA, per the IRS. The standout additions:

• Download an EIN verification notice (CP575) yourself. Banks and lenders routinely ask for proof of your EIN, and the usual answer was to request a Letter 147C by phone and wait. Designated officials can now pull a downloadable CP575 that works as a substitute — on the spot.
• Read your IRS notices digitally. The BTA now hosts a growing library of digital notices, including “CP081B, We May Have a Refund for You” and “CP211A, Application to file extension of time approved,” among others. No more waiting on paper mail to find out what the IRS wants.
• Pay — and manage payments — from a wallet. You can schedule a payment up to a year in advance, cancel a scheduled payment, store multiple bank accounts, and view recent payment history. You can even submit payments toward an Offer in Compromise to settle a tax debt for less than the full balance.
• View transcripts for payroll, income, and excise tax returns.

Access has also widened. According to the IRS and a practitioner breakdown from Current Federal Tax Developments, the BTA is now open to sole proprietors with an EIN, individual partners and shareholders (with an SSN/ITIN and a Schedule K-1 on file), S and C corporations, government entities, Indian tribal governments, and tax-exempt organizations.

Why it matters

A lot of small-business tax friction isn’t about the tax itself — it’s about access to your own information. Getting proof of your EIN, confirming a payment posted, or finding out what a notice actually says has historically meant phone-tree purgatory or a wait for paper mail. Pulling those tasks into a single online account is a real time-saver, and it’s free.

The payment features are the sleeper upgrade. For years, businesses that wanted to schedule federal payments online had to enroll in EFTPS, a separate system with its own signup lag. Being able to schedule, store bank accounts, and manage payments directly in the BTA removes a setup step that used to trip up new businesses right when they needed to make a deposit.

What this means for your business

• Set up the account before you need it. The worst time to create a BTA is the afternoon a lender asks for your EIN letter. Register now so the CP575 and your transcripts are a click away when it counts.
• Use it to kill the “wait for the mail” delay on notices. Digital notices mean you (or your bookkeeper) can see and respond to IRS correspondence faster — which matters when a notice has a response deadline.
• Reconcile payments against it. The payment history and transcript views are a clean way to confirm that federal deposits and estimated payments actually landed — a routine part of keeping your books tied out to the IRS.
• Loop in whoever handles your books. Much of the value here is in the boring reconciliation and document-retrieval work. Make sure the right person has access set up correctly under the entity’s designated-official rules.

The BTA now lets eligible businesses download an EIN verification notice (CP575) that “can be used instead of Letter 147C at banks and financial institutions.” — IRS, FS-2026-11

This is general information, not tax advice. Available features depend on your entity type and your role’s access permissions.

The bottom line

This isn’t a flashy tax change, but it’s the kind of upgrade that quietly saves small-business owners hours over a year — no more phone calls for an EIN letter, no more waiting on mailed notices, no separate enrollment just to schedule a payment. If you don’t already have a Business Tax Account set up, this is the nudge to do it.