How to File an 83(b) Election Online: Form 15620 and the 30 Days the IRS Will Not Extend.

You signed the stock purchase agreement on Monday, wired eighty dollars for 800,000 founder shares, and somebody on the cap table thread repeated the sentence every startup lawyer says: do not blow the 83(b) deadline. Until recently that meant printing a statement, driving to the post office, and paying for certified mail. Now you can file an 83(b) election online. The IRS opened electronic submission of Form 15620 in July 2025, and it fixes the worst part of the old process, proving the thing arrived. What it does not fix is the rule that makes this election dangerous: 30 days from the transfer, counted from the transfer date itself, with no extensions and no second chances.

Some history explains why this is news. For decades there was no official 83(b) form at all. You drafted your own statement, usually from the sample language in Rev. Proc. 2012-29, and mailed it to the IRS office where you file your return, because Treas. Reg. §1.83-2(c) says that is where the election goes. The IRS released Form 15620 on November 7, 2024 as the first standardized election document, and in July 2025 it went one step further and let you submit the form electronically. The filing itself now takes about ten minutes.

1. 01Sign in to your IRS Online Account at irs.gov, or create one. Identity verification runs through ID.me and requires a Social Security number or ITIN, which is why some non-US founders cannot use this route.
2. 02Answer the interview questions. You will need the company's name, address, and EIN, the transfer date, the number of shares, the fair market value per share on the transfer date, the amount you paid per share, and a description of the vesting restrictions.
3. 03Submit electronically, once. The portal gives you immediate confirmation of receipt, which is the whole advantage over the mailbox. Download the completed Form 15620 PDF before you log out.
4. 04Give a copy to the company. Treas. Reg. §1.83-2(d) requires you to deliver a copy of the election to the person for whom the services are performed, and your company needs it anyway to get its own reporting right.
5. 05Keep everything. You no longer attach the election to your Form 1040, a requirement the IRS eliminated in 2016 by T.D. 9779, but §6001 recordkeeping still expects you to produce it years later when you sell.

The default rule of IRC §83(a) taxes restricted stock as ordinary compensation when it vests, on whatever the shares are worth at each vesting date. For a startup that works, that is a disaster: you pay ordinary rates on growth you cannot sell. The §83(b) election flips the taxable moment to the grant date, so you pay ordinary tax on the spread between fair market value and what you paid on day one. For a founder who pays fair market value at incorporation, that spread is zero, so the election costs nothing. It also starts your capital gains holding period immediately under Treas. Reg. §1.83-4(a), which is what starts the five-year clock for the Section 1202 QSBS exclusion. The same logic applies to early-exercised options, where the election works alongside the AMT math on ISO exercises.

The portal launched with two limits that mattered to exactly the people most likely to use it. It originally capped a submission at 999,999 securities and allowed only two decimal places for the price per share, which is useless for a founder buying millions of shares at $0.0001. An October 2025 update fixed both, and the online form now accepts four decimal places and up to 99,999,999.99 securities. Two quirks remain. The online election has no space for a spouse's signature, so filers in community property states who want spousal consent documented on the election itself should file on paper. And the submission runs through your personal IRS Online Account, so your lawyer or accountant cannot click the button for you. They can prepare every number on the form, but you file it.

If you do file on paper, the old rules still work: mail one copy of Form 15620, or a Rev. Proc. 2012-29 style statement, to the IRS office where you file your return, per Treas. Reg. §1.83-2(c). Send it certified mail with a return receipt, because under §7502 the postmark date is your filing date. And whichever route you choose, choose one. The IRS instructions warn that filing the same election both online and by mail creates processing delays, which is the last thing you want attached to a deadline this unforgiving.

The deadline is written into the statute itself. IRC §83(b)(2) says the election must be made no later than 30 days after the date of transfer, and because Congress set the deadline rather than the IRS, the agency has no authority to waive it. The §301.9100 relief that rescues late entity classification elections and late rollovers does not reach statutory deadlines. Miss day 30 and you are back under §83(a), paying ordinary rates at every vesting date, and the only real repair is a new transfer, such as canceling and reissuing the grant, which creates its own legal and valuation problems. One quiet feature of Treas. Reg. §1.83-2(b) helps the paranoid: the election may be filed before the transfer date. If the wire and the board consent are scheduled, you do not have to wait for the clock to start before you file.

The election has one genuine downside worth naming. If you make it, pay tax on a real spread at grant, and then leave before vesting and forfeit the shares, §83(b)(1) denies you a deduction for the tax you already paid. That trade is still overwhelmingly worth it for a founder paying fair market value, where the tax at grant is zero, but it is a real decision for an employee early-exercising options with a meaningful spread.