As is the case every year, we’re hearing from lots of folks confused about when to send a 1099 form or other “information returns” to someone.  It is true that over time, these forms have continued to change, and the rules have become more specific… but the basics remain the same. The most important point is that only businesses need to issue 1099s — if you paid someone for personal purposes, you are not (yet) required to send them or the IRS a Form 1099.

Here’s a crash course for each type of form, followed by an FAQ.

1099-NEC
This form was new for 2020 and replaces the old Box 7 of Form 1099-MISC. “NEC” stands for “non-employee compensation”. It is due to recipients and the IRS by January 31st (or the first business day after that, if 1/31 falls on a weekend).

If you paid:
1) a NON-corporation (*see below);
2) for services (not products);
3) via check, cash, ACH, or wire transfer — but not merchant services or electronic payments (such as credit & debit cards, PayPal Business, Venmo Business (**see below) — and starting in 2022 Zelle/QuickPay, CashApp, personal Venmo & PayPal);
4) $600 or more in a calendar year;
then you need to send them a 1099-NEC.

(*) A lot of folks get confused and think the rule is if you paid an “individual,” but really the rule is a “non-corporation,” which means that partnerships and LLCs are included. Just because they have a business name doesn’t mean they’re incorporated. You cannot depend on the company’s name to determine corporate status, nor can you rely on the state LLC/Corp database, as it only indicates the entity type at the state level — almost any type of entity may elect corporate status with the IRS.

So, keep in mind that a company can be an LLC but be taxed as a corporation. In this case, you would not need to send them a 1099, because in the eyes of the IRS, they are incorporated. Here’s an example of a W-9 showing an LLC that is taxed as an S-Corp:

This is one of many reasons you should collect Form W-9 from all service vendors before giving them their first check, just to be safe. The person filling out the W-9 will indicate their entity type and whether or not they are taxed as a corporation.

There’s also an exception to the incorporation rule for attorneys and law firms. You must issue a 1099 to a lawyer or law firm regardless of whether they are incorporated. (Law firms and attorneys have so many specialized 1099 issues, they get their own blog post.)

(**) There’s a lot of confusion over Venmo and PayPal, because there are personal-use “Friends & Family” versions as well as business versions of both platforms. Legally, no business should be using the non-business versions of these payment types… but in real life, many do. It’s very hard to distinguish which payments were made using which method — in theory, a 1099-NEC would need to be issued to a vendor who was paid via a personal Venmo or PayPal method, but I’m not sure how this would be tracked. My recommendation (for many reasons) is to only use the business versions, and then the 1099-NEC is a non-issue (because Venmo and PayPal will issue a 1099-K instead). It also sounds like, starting in 2022, even the personal versions of these programs will be required to issue a 1099-K if $600 and over.

I know, that’s all very confusing. Here’s a nice decision-tree provided by our friends over at Bookkeepers.com, courtesy of Bookkeeping Buds.

1099-MISC

Items such as rent payments, royalties, attorney settlements (as mentioned above, not payments for legal services), and medical healthcare payments will still be reported on Form 1099-MISC, though the form has been redesigned and the boxes renumbered.

Report prizes and awards of $600 or more that are not for services performed in Box 3. Include the fair market value of merchandise won. And be careful here, as it is easy to accidentally include these on Form 1099-NEC if the recipient also provided unrelated services.

• Rent paid ($600 or more) (Box 1)
• Royalties paid of at least $10 or more (Box 2)
• Prizes and awards and certain other payments ($600 or more, see instructions for Form 1099-MISC, Box 3 for more information)
• Backup withholding or federal income tax withheld (any amount) (Box 4)
• Amounts paid specifically to physicians, physicians’ corporations, or other suppliers of health and medical services ($600 or more) (Box 6)
• Direct sales of at least $5,000 of consumer products to a buyer for resale anywhere other than a permanent retail establishment (Box 7)
• Gross proceeds paid to an attorney ($600 or more whether or not incorporated) (Box 10) – “made to an attorney in the course of your trade or business in connection with legal services, but not for the attorney’s services”; for example, a settlement agreement.

The deadline for providing this form to recipients is the same as above, January 31st. However, the deadline for filing 1099-MISC with the IRS is February 28 if filing on paper, and March 31 if filing electronically.

1099-K

It’s unlikely that anyone reading this will be in the position of issuing Form 1099-K to vendors — but you should know about this form, for a few reasons:
1) You are likely to receive one.
2) It’s the reason you don’t have to issue 1099-NEC to anyone you pay via credit card/debit card, Zelle, QuickPay, a business PayPal account, or a business Venmo account.
3) You may need to reconcile this form against the amount of sales income you report on your tax return.

Form 1099-K is for payments made in settlement of “reportable payment transactions”, which is any credit card, payment card or third-party network transaction. So if you receive payments in this way (unless you only accept checks, e-checks, ACH, or zelle/QuickPay, you probably do), then you’ll get a 1099-K for this total.

But because these amounts are reported to the IRS for you, you don’t need to issue 1099-NEC or 1099-MISC forms to vendors whom you paid using one of these methods. In that case, the recipient could end up having the same income reported to the IRS twice.

The rule used to be that this form was issued to anyone who had more than 200 transactions or $20,000 worth of transactions — but starting in 2022, that threshold will drop to only $600.

As a bookkeeper, accountant or tax preparer, it’s important to protect your small business clients by making sure all taxable income is being reported on their books/returns. If the 1099-K is for an amount that is lower than what’s on the income section of the Profit & Loss, it’s not likely to be an issue. But if it’s higher, you’ll need to do a reconciliation to show that the difference was due to non-taxable receipts such as sales taxes collected, tips collected, refunded sales, and the like.

1099-INT

This form is issued to anyone who lent your business money, and your business paid them at least $10 of interest in the past calendar year. It includes owners, partners, and shareholders.

Note: do not issue this form for accrued interest; it is only for actual payouts of interest in cash or trade.

The form is due to recipients by January 31 (February 1 in 2021), but isn’t due to the IRS until March 1 if filing on paper and March 31 if e-filing.

If not e-filing, you can use the IRS’s fill-in pdf Copy B for the recipient copy, but for the version that goes to the IRS, you have to order an official form with special scannable ink — they’re free, but they take a while to be mailed, so fill out your request early. Make sure to mark the year you are filing for, not the current year — an easy mistake to make.

Another note: I have had clients reach out confused by the language “You are not required to file Form 1099-INT for interest on an obligation issued by an individual”. This means if the loan were TO an individual rather than FROM one, and the individual paid interest to the company. (This is not usually the case.) In that situation, the individual would not have to issue the company a 1099-INT (although the company would still have to declare the interest income).

1099-DIV

This form is issued to a shareholder of a C-Corporation for dividends or other distributions paid in the past calendar year.

Most folks don’t think this applies to them — but if you own a business that is taxed as a C-Corp, and you took money out that wasn’t W-2 or loan repayments, then you may have issued yourself dividends. (And if it was for a loan repayment, did you pay the required amount of interest? If so, see the “1099-INT” section above.)

The form is due to recipients by January 31 (February 1 in 2021), but isn’t due to the IRS until March 1 if filing on paper and March 31 if e-filing.

If not e-filing, you can use the IRS’s fill-in pdf Copy B for the recipient copy, but for the version that goes to the IRS, you have to order an official form with special scannable ink — they’re free, but they take a while to be mailed, so fill out your request early. Make sure to mark the year you are filing for, not the current year — an easy mistake to make.

1098

This form is to report mortgage interest and real estate taxes. You may not think it applies to you, but if you do the bookkeeping for or are a member of a housing cooperative, you may find that it does. This needs to be issued to housing co-op members for their allocated portion of mortgage interest and real estate taxes paid by the cooperative, so they can deduct them on their personal tax return, Form 1040, Schedule A. If not e-filing, you can use the IRS’s fill-in pdf Copy B for the recipient copy, but for the version that goes to the IRS, you have to order an official form with special scannable ink — they’re free, but they take a while to be mailed, so fill out your request early. Make sure to mark the year you are filing for, not the current year — an easy mistake to make.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I do if the vendor will not give me their Tax ID Number, which I need to file the 1099?

First off, it’s the business’ responsibility to obtain this number. That’s why I recommend getting the W-9 from the vendor before giving them their first payment. But in the case where it’s 1099-time and you still don’t have that TIN for some reason, respectfully let the vendor know that not having their info will not prevent you from filing the 1099. It just means the IRS will receive it with “REFUSED” written in the field where the number should be (or if you use an e-filing program, you will check the box that the number is unavailable). This will almost always trigger an audit for both the business and the recipient, which no one wants. Presented with this information, I find that most non-compliant vendors are suddenly able to fill out that W-9 form after all.

Do I really have to send one to my landlord? They get angry when I bring it up.

If your landlord is not incorporated, yes, you do. If it makes them mad, then consider why… are they trying to avoid declaring it as taxable income? Is that the type of person you want to rent from?

What if you forgot to issue a 1099 to someone?

It’s never too late! Since the statute of limitations never starts if you don’t file a return, penalties and interest can continue to accrue forever. If you noticed that you forgot to file a 1099, even for a prior year, reach out to the recipient in question and make sure they declared and paid taxes on the income you inadvertently forgot to remind them about — and hopefully they have. In this case, no amended return will be required on their end, and the form’s arrival will not come as an unwelcome surprise. If not, then that’s a bigger concern. It is the responsibility of each recipient of income to declare it on their return, regardless of having received the 1099. Not getting the form does not exempt a taxpayer from declaring the income they earned. So, the business owner needs to evaluate the risk involved to their company in knowingly refusing to comply with tax law, versus the recipient’s desire to evade taxes.

What do you do if you receive a 1099 that is incorrect or unnecessary?

If you receive a 1099 that has incorrect information on it, simply reach out to the issuer to ask for a corrected 1099. Do this as soon as possible, as it will help them to fix it before it is submitted to the IRS.

If they will not correct the total, then declare the full amount on your tax return, but “back out” the incorrect amount as a negative, with an explanation to the IRS for why this amount was inaccurate. If you receive an audit notice, provide the IRS with the documentation showing why your calculation is correct, and the support showing you reached out to the issuer when you realized the form was not right.

If you should not have received a 1099 at all, follow the same advice as above. A good example of this would be if you received a 1099-K for credit card payments, but also received a 1099-NEC from the company that paid you (this is quite common… it is extremely challenging in most bookkeeping software to distinguish how a bill was paid in most reports). In this case, if the customer will not void the 1099 form for some reason, simply declare the full amount on your business’ tax return and “back out” the amount that was double-issued, with the explanation that it was already declared in income via 1099-K or some similar wording.

However, if the reason you should not have received the 1099 was that you are taxed as a corporation, and you’ve already declared this income on your tax return, then you can ignore the form — it will have no effect on anything and was just a waste of time on the part of the issuer.

How do I run the 1099 report in QuickBooks? Won’t it tell me who needs a form from my company?

Most bookkeeping professionals don’t use the 1099 report that QuickBooks generates — it’s too prone to user error when setting up the vendors, accounts, and dollar-thresholds. Instead we run the detail of the cash accounts and filter by transaction type – Check, Expense, Bill Payment… then sort by Name. The problem may be that there is not a name in there, or it is not a Vendor Name: another great reason to make sure you’re setting up bank rules and being careful about data entry to include vendor information on all transactions.

How does PayPal work?

Oh my goodness, is this ever complicated.

If you pay a business using your personal bank or Paypal account, or pay through “Friends & Family” PayPal you do need to send a 1099 (if over $600), because PayPal thinks this was a personal transaction — because, as I mentioned at the top of this post, personal transactions do not require 1099 forms. If you had used “Business” PayPal, then PayPal would send the 1099-K and there would be no reason to issue a 1099-NEC.

A colleague of mine recently called PayPal support about this and here was their response:
If the transaction detail says “money sent”, those qualify as Friends & Family transactions. However, if the transaction says “invoice paid” or “payment”, then it is a business payment — even if it’s within a personal Paypal account.

What about Venmo?

According to Venmo’s term of service, using it for business is a violation, and they can seize whatever money you have sitting in your Venmo account if they catch you using it for business.

However, we know sometimes this is the best way to collect money from folks, or that customers will send you Venmo funds without thinking about it, or that you’ll do the same with your vendors.

Venmo is considered a “peer-to-peer transfer service”, and not a third-party network. Therefore, treat these like cash payments from a business and send a 1099 form to your vendor.

(Side note: Venmo is starting to accept applications from a number of businesses for a new “Business Venmo”, but it’s brand new and very limited. Be careful with this. The problem with Venmo, PayPal, Bento, and other similar companies like that is that they don’t act like they’re banks — and their staff doesn’t realize that banking is actually the primary function of the company they work for — they don’t get the same kind of intensive training that bankers do. I recommend avoiding Venmo for business payments as much as possible.)

What about the states?

Okay, this gets pretty overwhelming pretty fast, so I am linking to a site that has all the states’ rules in one place — https://www.taxbandits.com/state-filing-requirements/

The short version here is that not all states have the same rules. Some allow the IRS filing of certain information returns to substitute for state filing requirements, and some don’t. Some require e-filing and some allow physical mailings. In past years, the IRS offered state-filings with the 1099-MISC, but didn’t bring that into the modern era when they released 1099-NEC. So please, do your homework when it comes to state filings.

Where can I find more info on due dates, penalties, and real-life scenarios?

Check out my colleague Mark Kohler’s excellent blog post. His charts for deadlines and penalties are very handy.

Another colleague, Questian Telka, and I worked together on a video series on what a W-9 is, and how to prepare a W-9 for each type of entity; and she followed it up with another video on whether or not you need to issue a 1099.

And there you have it! Simple, see?

**many thanks to The Bookkeeping Buds for editing assistance**

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