This is an important reminder that Pershing has reached agreement with the IRS to send out 1099’s around February 15th. The reason for the delay from the normal January 31st time scale is that Pershing proved that the data is much more likely to be correct if delayed two weeks. The tax changes of the Bush Presidency allowed for different tax rates on dividends. The determination of which dividends were “qualified” versus “unqualified” is complicated and corporations were constantly changing the splits. In turn, mutual funds had to change their reports of which dividends were “qualified” too. Therefore delaying by two weeks was very helpful to get the information correct the first time.

1099R’s for retirement account distributions will probably be distributed somewhat sooner.

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It is likely that other brokerage firms will be  similarly be light with their 2010 1099s.