The New 1099 Thresholds for 2026: Who You Still Have to Send a Form To

If you’ve spent the last two years bracing for a 1099-K on every $600 you ran through Venmo or Stripe — stop bracing. The rule that scared everyone never actually took hold, and the version that stuck is the old, friendlier one.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reset two different 1099 thresholds. People mix them up because both say “1099,” but they cover different payments and they moved in different directions. Here’s where each one lands for 2026.

1099-NEC: $600 is now $2,000

If you pay a contractor for business services — a designer, a sub, a freelance bookkeeper — you’ve always had to cut them a 1099-NEC at $600. Starting with payments made in 2026, that floor jumps to $2,000. Pay someone less than $2,000 across the whole year, and no 1099-NEC.

Two things to keep straight. The new $2,000 floor is for payments made after December 31, 2025 — the forms you’re filing for 2025 still run on the old $600 rule. And starting in 2027 the $2,000 gets indexed for inflation, so it’ll drift up over time.

1099-K: the $600 panic is dead

The 1099-K is what the payment platforms — PayPal, Venmo for business, Stripe, Square, the marketplaces — send when money runs through them. This is the one that made headlines for years, with a threatened drop to $600 that kept getting pushed back.

It’s gone. The threshold is back to the old rule: a platform only issues a 1099-K once you clear both $20,000 in gross payments and 200 transactions in a year. And it’s retroactive — that $600 version never really happened.

The trap: a form threshold is not an income threshold

Here’s what trips people up every single year. These numbers decide whether a form gets generated. They do not decide whether the money is taxable. All of your business income goes on your return whether a 1099 shows up or not. Collect $1,500 from a client who never sends you a form, and that $1,500 is still income. Higher thresholds mean less paperwork — not less tax.

So don’t read “I didn’t get a 1099” as “I don’t have to report it.” That’s the assumption that turns into an IRS notice — same family of thinking as the myths in Viral Tax “Hacks” That Quietly Trigger Audits.

What to actually do

Get a W-9 from every contractor before you pay them — not in January when you’re chasing people down. The higher floor doesn’t change that. The second a vendor might cross into 1099 territory, you want their info on file, and the only way to know is to track the payments as you go.

Then keep your books current enough to pull a clean “what did I pay each vendor this year” total whenever you want it. And if you’ve brought on remote help in other states, the payroll side has its own landmines — that’s Hired an Out-of-State Employee?.

This article is general information, not tax advice. Reporting requirements depend on how you pay your vendors and how they're classified — let's confirm your specific obligations before filing season.