Do I need to report bank interest under $600 when no 1099 is issued?

Yes, you absolutely need to report ALL interest income regardless of whether you receive a 1099-INT form or not. Banks are only required to issue 1099-INT forms when interest exceeds $10 (not $600), but you're still legally obligated to report every penny of interest you earned. The $600 threshold you're seeing in bank FAQs likely refers to the 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC forms for other types of income, not interest income. For interest, the reporting threshold for the bank is much lower. To make this easier, I'd recommend downloading your December or year-end statements from each bank account. They typically include a year-to-date summary of interest earned, even for small amounts. This saves you from having to go through each monthly statement. Even if it's just a few dollars, technically you need to include it on your tax return on Schedule B if your total interest exceeds $1,500, or directly on Form 1040 if it's less than that.

I started using taxr.ai this year and it's been super helpful with exactly this kind of situation. I had a similar issue with tracking interest from multiple accounts (I was rate-chasing with several high-yield savings accounts). The tool at https://taxr.ai helped me identify all my interest income without having to manually go through every statement. I just uploaded my bank statements and it automatically extracted all the interest payments, even from accounts that didn't issue 1099s. Saved me hours of combing through statements trying to find small interest payments! The best part was that it organized everything for Schedule B, which made plugging numbers into my tax software so much easier. Definitely worth checking out if you have multiple accounts with small interest amounts.

I tried taxr.ai after seeing it mentioned here and I'm actually impressed. I was really skeptical about uploading my financial documents (as you saw from my question earlier), but I decided to try it with just one statement first to see if it worked. Not only did it correctly identify all the interest income, but it also found a small bank fee that was tax-deductible that I would have missed. I ended up uploading all my statements from my 6 different accounts, and it organized everything perfectly for my tax return. The security aspect seems solid too - they give you the option to have your documents deleted after analysis, which I appreciated. Definitely making tax prep easier this year!

If you're having trouble getting through to the IRS to ask about this interest reporting question, try Claimyr. I spent DAYS trying to get an agent on the phone about a similar tax question last year (had interest from accounts in multiple states and wasn't sure how to report it all). After waiting on hold for hours with no luck, I found https://claimyr.com and they got me connected to an actual IRS agent in about 20 minutes. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c The IRS agent confirmed I needed to report all interest regardless of amount and helped me understand exactly how to document everything correctly. Saved me from potentially making a mistake that could have triggered an audit.

I need to eat my words from my skeptical comment earlier. After reading more about Claimyr, I decided to try it for an unresolved tax issue I've had for months (related to missing interest reporting from a bank that went out of business). I was genuinely shocked when I got connected to an IRS agent after just 25 minutes. I didn't have to sit on hold or repeatedly call back - their system just did all that for me and called when an agent was ready. The IRS agent was able to confirm that I should estimate the interest based on my partial statements and include a note with my return. For anyone dealing with interest reporting issues or similar tax questions, getting a definitive answer straight from the IRS really helps with peace of mind. Won't be spending hours on hold again!

Something nobody mentioned yet - check your 1099-INT reporting settings with your banks! I discovered that some of my banks had my preferences set to "electronic only" for tax documents, so they weren't mailing anything. When I logged into each bank's website and went to the tax documents section, I found several 1099-INTs waiting for me electronically, even for amounts just over $10. You might have some forms already issued that you just haven't seen because they're not coming in the mail.

Has anyone ever been audited for not reporting tiny amounts of interest? I mean, if we're talking about $2-3 in some old account, is the IRS really going to care? Asking for a friend 😬

Just to add to what others have said about the reporting thresholds - I work in banking compliance and can confirm that banks are required to file information returns (Form 1099-INT) with the IRS for ANY amount of interest paid, regardless of how small. The $10 threshold only determines whether they're required to send YOU a copy. So even if you earned $2 in interest and didn't get a 1099-INT in the mail, the bank still reported that $2 to the IRS. This means their computers will expect to see that income on your tax return. The good news is that for small amounts under $1,500 total, you can just report the total on Line 2b of Form 1040 without having to fill out Schedule B. But definitely don't skip reporting it entirely - the IRS matching system is pretty sophisticated these days and will catch discrepancies, even small ones. For your situation with multiple inactive accounts, I'd recommend calling each bank's customer service line. They can usually provide you with a year-end interest summary over the phone, which will save you from having to dig through months of statements.