New IRS form for independent contractor tax filings

If you submit 1099s to pay your reporters and other resources, the IRS has released a new form you must use for this purpose starting with this year’s end-of-January filing for 2020 payments.

This new form, 1099-NEC, is for reporting non-employee compensation, so if you paid any resource over $600 in 2020, you must report it with this form, not 1099-MISC as you did in previous years.

Fileable download version not available for 2020

Perhaps because of the form’s newness, the IRS has not released a downloadable version for filing with the IRS. The downloadable version can be used to give to resources for their records and filing with state tax departments, if applicable.

You must order this form by mail from the IRS ASAP to submit to the IRS before the deadline, or file online using the IRS’s FIRE system. The IRS will not accept the downloadable form for filings and will penalize you for submitting forms that cannot be scanned.

We updated the RB9 Print 1099 Forms function so it will print correctly on the new 1099-NEC form. You have until February 1, 2021 to submit 1099-NECs for 2020 earnings to the IRS and distribute them to your resources.

For more information visit the IRS website.