Guides / Integration guides

W-9 Tax Collection

For US tax compliance, Giftronaut can automatically collect IRS Form W-9 from recipients once their rewards cross the annual reporting threshold. It is configured in the portal and applied automatically to every qualifying order — including the ones you place through the API and MCP.

What W-9 collection does

When you send gift cards to recipients in the United States, IRS rules may require you to collect a Form W-9 (taxpayer name and TIN — an SSN or EIN) once a recipient's cumulative rewards reach a reporting threshold within a calendar year.

Giftronaut handles this end to end. You do not implement any of it in your integration: once the feature is enabled in the portal, Giftronaut tracks each recipient's yearly total across your orders, decides who needs a W-9, prompts those recipients during redemption, and stores the completed forms for you to download.

There is no W-9 API. W-9 collection is not something you enable per request — there is no parameter to send and no endpoint to call. You configure it once in the portal and Giftronaut applies it automatically to qualifying orders from every channel (portal, API, and MCP).

How it works, end to end

#	Who	What happens
1	You (portal)	Set up a tax entity and turn W-9 collection on (one-time setup — see below).
2	You (API / MCP / portal)	Place orders as usual. No W-9-specific fields are required.
3	Giftronaut	Adds each recipient's USD amount to their running calendar-year total, aggregated across all of your orders and channels.
4	Giftronaut	When a recipient's yearly total reaches the reporting threshold, they are flagged as a W-9 collection target.
5	Recipient	At redemption, a flagged US recipient is asked to complete a short W-9 form before claiming their gift.
6	You (portal)	Review and download submitted W-9 forms from the portal at tax time.

Enable it in the portal (one-time setup)

W-9 collection is off by default. To turn it on, sign in to the Giftronaut portal and open Settings → Taxes:

Create a tax entity. Enter your legal entity name, address, tax classification, and EIN. This is the payer identity that appears on your tax records.
Mark one entity active. The active entity is the one W-9 submissions are associated with.
Turn W-9 collection on. Toggle the feature to enabled. From that point on, qualifying orders begin contributing to each recipient's yearly total.

Collection only runs when the feature is on and an active tax entity exists. If either is missing, orders are processed normally but no W-9 tracking takes place.

The reporting threshold

Giftronaut aggregates the USD value each recipient receives, keyed by recipient and calendar year (evaluated in US Eastern time). When a recipient's cumulative total reaches $2,000 in a year, that recipient is flagged for W-9 collection.

Per recipient, per year. The total is tracked by recipient email and resets each calendar year.
Aggregated across everything. Orders placed in the portal, via the API, and via MCP all contribute to the same running total — a recipient who receives several smaller rewards across channels is flagged once their combined total crosses the threshold.
USD value. Amounts are aggregated in USD.

Exact tax rules and thresholds are managed by Giftronaut in line with current IRS requirements. For the authoritative explanation of how collection is triggered, see Understanding W-9 collection ↗.

How API & MCP orders are counted

Orders you create through the API and MCP feed the same yearly aggregation as orders placed in the portal — so your programmatic sends are never a blind spot for compliance. This is automatic; there is nothing to opt into.

Order type	Counts toward W-9?	Notes
Choice Card	Yes	Always (Choice Cards are USD).
Branded Card	Yes — USD products	Counted when the product currency is USD. Non-USD branded products are not part of US W-9 reporting.
Reward Link	No	Reward links have no per-recipient email at order time, so there is no recipient to aggregate.

Sandbox is never counted. Only production orders contribute to W-9 aggregation. Sandbox orders never touch a recipient's yearly total or trigger a W-9 request, so you can test your order flow freely.

W-9 never affects your order. W-9 tracking runs independently of order placement. If anything about the tax step were to fail, your order still succeeds and the API/MCP response is unchanged — value delivery is never blocked by W-9 processing.

What recipients experience

Recipients below the threshold redeem exactly as normal. Once a recipient is flagged, the next time they open their redemption page they are asked to complete a short W-9 form — legal name, address, tax classification, and TIN (SSN or EIN) with a signature — before they can claim their gift. The prompt applies to US persons.

Because collection is tied to the redemption page, it works the same regardless of how the order was created — a recipient who received their reward through your API integration sees the same flow as one who received it from the portal.

Reviewing & downloading submissions

Completed W-9 forms are available in the portal under Settings → Taxes. From there you can review who has submitted, chase outstanding requests, and download the forms (including PDF copies) for your records at tax time. See Downloading W-9 submissions ↗.

Learn more

Full guidance lives in the Giftronaut Help Center:

W-9 collection concerns US tax reporting. It is not tax advice — consult your tax advisor about your specific obligations.