How to fill out a W-9 PDF without uploading it
Form W-9 asks for your Social Security number or EIN. Online PDF editors make you upload it to their servers first. PDFPane fills it in inside Chrome, on your computer.
Step by step
- Open the form. Open the W-9 in Chrome — the one the requester sent you, or the current form from irs.gov — and click the PDFPane button in the toolbar. The form opens in the editor. A W-9 saved on your computer can be dropped straight into the editor instead.
- Fill in lines 1 to 7. The 23 boxes are highlighted as soon as the form opens; press Tab to go from one to the next. Line 1 is your name as shown on your tax return, line 2 a business name if you have one.
- Tick your tax classification (line 3a). Click the box — individual/sole proprietor, C or S corporation, partnership, trust/estate, or LLC with its letter.
- Enter your TIN in Part I. Your SSN or your EIN, in the boxes provided. It is typed into the file on your computer and never sent anywhere.
- Sign and date Part II. Pick Sign and draw your signature, type it in a handwriting style, or use a photo of it; click the Signature line to place it. Date adds today's date.
- Download. You get a new copy with everything filled in; the blank form you opened is left as it was.
Good to know
- Who gets it: the W-9 goes to whoever asked for it — a client, a bank, a platform. The form itself says not to send it to the IRS.
- Signing: most requesters accept a signature added this way. If yours insists on ink, fill the form in PDFPane, print it and sign the paper.
- Accents and non-English names are typed correctly into the fields, where many tools print blank boxes.
- Why not an online editor: a W-9 holds exactly what identity thieves want — name, address and SSN together. With PDFPane the file is never uploaded; free downloads are counted with a Google sign-in, and only that count goes to our server.