This announcement provides updated information to Publication 1187, Specifications for Filing Form 1042-S, Foreign Person’s U.S. Source Income Subject to Withholding, Electronically or Magnetically. This information is general in nature. There are no legislative or format changes. Information provided in Rev. Proc. 2004-63, 2004-45 I.R.B. 795 (dated November 8, 2004), is still valid with the exception of the following items:
The Martinsburg Computing Center was renamed the Enterprise Computing Center-Martinsburg (ECC-MTB).
IRS/ECC-MTB now offers an Internet connection at http://fire.irs.gov for electronic filing. The FIRE System will be down from December 23, 2005, through January 3, 2006, for upgrading. It is not operational during this time for submissions.
Beginning in Tax Year 2006, processing year 2007, IRS/ECC-MTB will no longer accept 31/2-inch diskettes for filing 1042-S information returns.
Additional special characters were added (e.g., period, apostrophe, pound sign and forward slash). The special characters can be used in the “W” record, fields 14-133 Withholding Agent’s Name Line 1-3; fields 134-213 Withholding Agent’s Street Line 1 & 2; “Q” record, fields 94-213 Recipient’s Name Line 1-3; and, fields 214-293 Recipient’s Street Line 1 & 2.
IRS/ECC-MTB strongly encourages all electronic or magnetic media filers to submit a test. Testing dates will be November 1, 2005 through December 15, 2005.
The following change was made to the Withholding Agent “W” Record, field position 13, field title Withholding Agent’s EIN Indicator:
Note: Use EIN indicator 1 only if the Withholding Agent’s EIN begins with “98” and the Withholding Agent’s City, State and Country Code fields indicate that the Withholding Agent is not a U.S. Withholding Agent.
Publication 1187 is available through the IRS Website www.irs.gov.
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