1099-NEC form: create recipient copies

1. Say how you paid. Payments by card or through a payment app are reported on Form 1099-K by the payment company, so the tool asks first.
2. Pick the tax year. Choose 2026, 2025 and 2024. The form changes with the year, and the tool shows that year’s boxes.
3. Enter the payer, the recipient and the amounts. Your business details and taxpayer ID, the recipient’s, and the amount for box 1a. A preview of Copy B updates as you type.
4. Check the preview and create the copies. Confirm the delivery email. The PDF with Copy B, Copy 2 and Copy 1 is sent as an attachment. No sign-in is needed.

• Copy B of Form 1099-NEC: for the recipient.
• Copy 2: also for the recipient, to file with a state income tax return when required.
• Copy 1: for your state tax department, or to keep with your own records.
• The IRS “Instructions for Recipient” page, to hand over with Copy B.
• The official IRS form layout for the tax year you choose: 2026, 2025 and 2024. Each year uses that year’s own revision of the form.
• One PDF per form, sent to the email address you confirm. No sign-in is needed to order. Sign in with this email to download again within 1 year.

PayStubGo does not make Copy A, the red copy that goes to the IRS. The IRS says a Copy A printed from its website cannot be scanned and should not be filed; the black copies are the ones you may print and give to the recipient. One form for tax year 2026 is $5.49, and packs of 1, 3, 5 and 10 bring the price per form down.

Form 1099-NEC, Nonemployee Compensation, is the information return a business uses to report what it paid for services to someone who is not its employee. The payer prepares it. One copy goes to the IRS and the recipient gets a copy to use for their own tax return. The recipient’s copy says why they got it: the payer did not treat them as an employee and did not withhold income tax or social security and Medicare taxes.

It covers payments made in the course of a trade or business. Personal payments are not reported on it.

The IRS instructions give four conditions. When all four are met, the payment is generally reported as nonemployee compensation:

• You made the payment to someone who is not your employee.
• You made the payment for services in the course of your trade or business.
• You made the payment to an individual, a partnership, an estate or, in some cases, a corporation.
• Your payments to that payee during the year reached the reporting amount for the tax year ($2,000 or more for 2026).

Some payments are left off. The instructions list, among others, payments to a corporation in general, payments for merchandise, freight and storage, and wages paid to employees, which go on Form W-2. Attorneys’ fees are an exception to the corporation rule: they are reported even when the law firm is a corporation.

If you withheld federal income tax from a payee under the backup withholding rules, the form is required whatever the amount paid.

For tax year 2026, nonemployee compensation is reported when it totals $2,000 or more for the year. The figure depends on the tax year, so a late or corrected form for an earlier year uses that year’s figure:

The tool tells you when an amount is under the figure for the year you picked. It does not stop you: you can still give the recipient a statement.

The recipient’s copy is due by January 31, and the form is due to the IRS by January 31, the same date whether you file on paper or electronically. The date falls in the year after the tax year.

If any date shown falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday in the District of Columbia or where the return is to be filed, the due date is the next business day.

The form for tax year 2026 is a new revision. Nonemployee compensation moved from Box 1 to Box 1a, there are new boxes for cash tips, the tipped occupation code and overtime compensation, and the payer’s and recipient’s addresses are entered in separate boxes. Forms for earlier years keep the layout of their own year.

Payments made by card or through a payment network are reported by the payment settlement entity on Form 1099-K, not on 1099-NEC/MISC. If you paid the same person partly by card and partly another way, such as by check or bank transfer, only the payments made the other way belong on your 1099-NEC. PayStubGo does not make Form 1099-K.

Form 1099-NEC is for pay for services by a nonemployee. Form 1099-MISC is for other payments, such as rents, royalties, prizes and awards, medical and health care payments, and gross proceeds paid to an attorney. A payee can get both forms from the same payer in one year when both kinds of payment were made.

Attorneys show the difference well. Fees you pay an attorney for legal services go in box 1a of Form 1099-NEC. Gross proceeds paid to an attorney, for example in a settlement, go on Form 1099-MISC.

• Using one year’s form for another year. Each tax year has its own revision, and the boxes are not the same.
• Leaving the calendar year empty. The form has an entry space for the four-digit year; the tool fills it from the year you pick.
• Entering the taxpayer ID in the wrong format. An SSN or ITIN is written XXX-XX-XXXX and an EIN is written XX-XXXXXXX.
• Including payments made by card or payment app. Those are reported on Form 1099-K by the payment company.
• Typing an amount in the direct sales box (Box 2). It is a checkbox for direct sales of consumer products for resale, not a money box.
• Trying to fix a form that was already given out by voiding it. A correction is a new form with the CORRECTED box marked.
• Typing the contractor’s name, address and taxpayer ID from memory. Take them from the Form W-9 the contractor gave you, so the name and number match what the IRS has on file.
• Sending the form without checking Box 1 against your own payment records. Box 1 is the total you paid in the calendar year, so a payment you sent in late December belongs to that year even if it arrived in January.