When Are 1099s Due? The Dates Moved, and What to Collect Before January

1099s come due early in January. A Form 1099 is a slip you send somebody to report what you paid them during the year, and a matching copy goes to the IRS. Most small businesses owe at least one, because most of us pay somebody we never hired as an employee.

So when are 1099s due, and what happens if you miss one? You pay per form, not per business. Ten contractors you never send a form to costs you $6,800 in penalties, on top of whatever you paid the contractors themselves.

Two things changed for this round of forms. The 1099 threshold went up, and that is the dollar figure deciding who gets a form at all. Two dates on the calendar shifted as well.

So let us walk through it in the order it reaches you. By the end you will know when 1099s are due, who actually gets a 1099 now that the floor has moved, what one missing form costs you, and why to ask for the W-9 before the last check of the year. A W-9 is the one-page form where a contractor writes down their name and tax number.

I am Dr. Michael Wendrow. I have run a chiropractic office in North Miami for more than 30 years, and I started Prime Time Business Network in 2012.

Key takeaways

Step one: when 1099s are due for the forms you send in early 2027

Your 1099 forms are due on February 1, 2027. That date covers almost every small business. On that day the form for money you paid somebody for work has to be in your contractor's hands and filed with the IRS. Three later dates cover the other forms.

You will probably send a Form 1099-NEC. The letters stand for nonemployee compensation, which means money you paid somebody for work. Form 1099-MISC covers other payments a business makes, such as rent on your office.

Two of these dates moved, and the calendar is the reason. January 31 is the usual 1099-NEC due date. That date is a Sunday in 2027, so federal law pushes it to Monday, February 1.

February 16, 2027 is the second date, and it catches one narrow case. You might have paid a lawyer and reported it in the box for gross proceeds. The copy that person gets is not due until then, because February 15 is Washington's Birthday.

March 1, 2027 is the third date. If you mail your 1099-MISC forms to the IRS on paper, that is the 1099 filing deadline for them. February 28 is the normal date, and it falls on a Sunday in 2027.

March 31, 2027 is the last date, and it covers 1099-MISC forms you file online. The 1099-NEC deadline gets no extra time at all. Its February 1 date covers the contractor's copy and the government's copy together.

Whether you may use paper depends on how many forms you send. An information return is any one of these reporting slips. Your 1099s and your W-2s count together toward one total.

If you file 10 or more of them in a year, the IRS requires you to send them electronically. So a shop with six employees and five contractors is over that line.

Here is a chart of how the four dates sit on one calendar, measured from the end of the tax year:

The next question is which of the people you paid even gets one of these forms.

Step two: who actually gets a 1099 now that the floor has moved

The floor is $2,000 for money you paid out during 2026. If you paid somebody less than that for work, you owe them no 1099-NEC. Congress moved the number up from $600, and the change covers every payment made after December 31, 2025.

That amount sits in federal law, at section 6041 of the tax code. The same section raises the number with inflation for payments made in 2027 and later. So treat that number as this year's figure and look the 1099 reporting requirements up again next November.

You have to have paid the person while running your business. Paying a babysitter at your house does not count. The amount covers the whole year rather than one job, so four $600 checks to the same handyman come to $2,400. That person gets a form.

Most corporations are the exception to all of this. If the business you paid is a corporation, you send no 1099 at all. Two kinds still get one. A law firm you paid fees to gets a form, and so does any business providing medical or health care services.

One harder question sits underneath all of this. You might set this person's hours and tell them how to do the job. That makes them an employee rather than a contractor.

You then owe them a W-2, which is the form an employee gets, and the employee-or-contractor test becomes a separate job. A 1099 filed on time does not fix a wrong answer there. What happens if you skip somebody who should have had one?

Step three: what one missing form costs you, twice

One missing form costs you $680. The IRS charges $340 because the form never reached the government. It charges the same amount again because the copy never reached your contractor. Those are two separate 1099 penalties in the law, and both apply to one form.

Both figures fall a long way if you move fast. If you file the form within 30 days of the due date, each penalty drops to $60, so the pair costs $120. If you fix it after that but by August 1, each one is $130.

Every number here comes from the IRS schedule for forms filed during 2027. It applies to a business averaging $5 million a year in sales or less, which covers almost every member business I meet. The yearly ceiling for a business that size is $1,397,000, and no small shop will reach it.

One case carries no ceiling at all. The IRS may decide you ignored the rule on purpose. Each form then costs $690, or a tenth of what you should have reported if that comes to more.

So the 30-day window is the one worth putting in your diary. A late 1099 penalty caught inside it runs at under a fifth of the full price. If you wait until the IRS writes to you about it, that cheap tier has already gone.

Here is the same missing form, caught quickly and never caught at all:

Step four: ask for the W-9 before the last check of the year

Ask every contractor for a W-9 before you hand over your last check of the year. No W-9 deadline exists anywhere in the rules, which is exactly why the job slips to January. By then the work is finished and the money is paid. The one person who can give you a tax number has stopped returning calls.

Federal law has an answer for a missing tax number, and you will not like it. If a contractor never hands you one, you have to hold back 24% of what you pay them. That money goes to the IRS instead of to the contractor.

You can only hold money back out of a check you have not written yet. So your last payment of the year is the only pressure you have left. If you ask for the W-9 alongside the invoice rather than after it, a contractor who wants paying fills it in the same day.

Knowing when to send 1099 forms is the easy half. Having a tax number for every person who needs one is the half that takes until Christmas. The next question is whether you can buy yourself more time in February.

Can you get an extension on a 1099-NEC?

An extension on a 1099-NEC is not automatic, and most businesses will not get one. Form 8809 is the request, and for almost every other reporting slip it buys an automatic 30 days. The 1099-NEC and the W-2 are the two exceptions, and the form says so itself.

For those two you have to show a reason from a short list. A fire or a declared disaster counts. So does the death or serious illness of the person who handles your filing.

Two more details catch people out. The request for a 1099-NEC cannot be sent online, so it goes in the post. And Form 8809 asks for more time to file with the IRS, which is not the same as the copy your contractor is waiting on.

Do you file a 1099 with the state of Florida?

No, Florida has no 1099 for you to file. The Florida Department of Revenue lists every tax a business here pays it, and no reporting slip of this kind appears on that list. Florida collects no personal income tax, so the state has nothing to check a contractor's 1099 against.

That spares you a step most national guides give a whole section to. Businesses in some other states file a copy of every 1099 with their own state, on a separate date. In Florida the federal date is the only one you are working to.

Employees do bring the state back into it. If anybody is on your payroll, you still owe a reemployment tax report and a new hire report. Both of those run on Florida dates rather than federal ones.

Common questions about 1099 deadlines

Do I send a 1099 to a contractor who lives in another state?

Yes. The rule is federal, so where your contractor lives changes nothing about the form or the date. Florida having no filing of its own is a fact about Florida, not about the people you paid.

My bookkeeper files these for me. Am I still the one who pays the penalty?

Yes, you are. The law puts the duty on the business that made the payment, so hiring somebody moves the work and not the responsibility. Ask your bookkeeper in December which contractors they are still missing a tax number for.

Does my contractor stop owing tax if I do not have to send a form?

No. That rule decides whether a form goes out, and nothing else. The person you paid owes tax on what they earned whether a form goes out or not.

What a room of other owners gets you before January

A room of other owners gets you the bookkeeper you would otherwise go hunting for in February. We seat one professional per business category in each chapter. So the bookkeeper in your room has nobody competing for your work.

More than 400 of us meet across 15 chapters in South Florida. We have run it that way since 2012. Our meetings happen every other week, in person and online.

You hear what other owners are dealing with that month. In November the talk turns to W-9s and closing out the books. Somebody in that room already pays a person to file their forms, and they will tell you who.

Owners who sort this out in November walk into February with nothing left to chase. You will have a tax number for every person you paid, and the forms go out in an afternoon. You spend that month selling instead of ringing round for paperwork.

Still chasing W-9s this December?

Come to a Prime Time meeting this December and ask the room who they use. The 15 chapters meet every other week, in person and online, and you can see which ones sit near you. Mark Hirsch handles membership and can tell you which chapter still has your business category open.