.jpg)
For more than 70 years, $600 was the number that triggered a 1099. Pay a contractor that much for services in a year, and a form went out the following January. But starting with payments made in 2026, the number is $2,000, and the first filing season under the new rule is less than three months away.
It's easy to read that as a lighter January, because for some clients it will be. For most accounting and bookkeeping firms however, the bigger change is in the conversations you'll need to have before a single form gets filed.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, rewrote the reporting thresholds for the information returns your clients deal with most:
The new threshold also has one exception: if your client withheld tax under backup withholding, the payee gets a 1099 regardless of the amount paid. Backup withholding itself now follows the $2,000 level, and the figure will be adjusted for inflation starting in 2027. The IRS Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC cover every box and threshold in detail.
"I don't need W-9s from small vendors anymore." They still do! A contractor paid $1,500 in March can easily be paid another $800 in November, and chasing a W-9 in January from someone your client hasn't worked with in months is slow going. Collecting it at onboarding, whatever the expected spend, avoids that.
"If I didn't get a 1099, it isn't income." Self-employed clients will receive fewer forms, but every dollar they earned is still taxable. Their own records now carry more of the weight.
"My state follows the federal rule." Not necessarily. State thresholds and filing requirements vary, so check each state your clients operate in before applying $2,000 across the board.
And one more trap: late or corrected forms for the 2025 tax year still use the $600 threshold. If your team is handling both in the same January, keep them clearly separated.
Form 1099-NEC is due to recipients and the IRS on February 1, 2027, since January 31 falls on a Sunday. Form 1099-MISC recipient copies are due the same day, with IRS filing due March 1 on paper or March 31 electronically. Clients filing 10 or more information returns in total, counting W-2s and every 1099 type together, must file electronically.
Preparing the forms is rarely what slows a firm down. Collecting what goes into them is. You need a vendor list, total payments per payee, current W-9s, each payee's entity type, and how each vendor was paid. Card payments are reported by the processor on a 1099-K, so they stay off your client's 1099-NEC. Payment app transactions depend on how each one was processed, so review them individually rather than assuming the app reported them. This year adds a sorting step: which vendors crossed $2,000, and which fell short.
Requests sent in early December tend to get answered. Requests sent in mid-January compete with everything else on your clients' desks.
Client Hub's 1099/W-9 Manager brings the vendor side of this work into one view. It pulls vendors with recorded payments from QuickBooks and shows each one's total paid, Tax ID status, and W-9 status, so your team can see who crossed $2,000 and whose paperwork is missing. Request W-9s from several vendors at once, review and correct what they upload, and sync the changes back to QuickBooks. When the data is complete, export it to your 1099 filing service or file from QuickBooks.
Everything else you need from the client goes out as a single request through the client portal, with automatic reminders handling the follow-up. A reusable 1099 workflow template assigns each step to the right person, with due dates built around the February 1 deadline.
Set it up once, and next year's 1099 season starts from a finished template instead of a blank checklist.
Check out Client Hub to see how it fits your 1099 workflow!
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
