Unofficial Tax Guide

What is a 1099 and who gets one? We hear this term used more and more frequently as many employers are opting to use contract labor versus hiring employees, who can turn out to be quite expensive when you factor in the insurance, payroll taxes, and other possible liability. Hopefully this will be able to explain, who can receive one, its purpose, and why.

The 1099 forms, if you are the recipient, should be furnished to you on an annual basis, by a set deadline (January, 31^st), and must be furnished and filed by the company no later than February 28, 2006.

If you are an independent contractor, or you receive income that is classified as non-employee income, or miscellaneous income you will receive what is known as a 1099-Misc. These are the information returns most often received for contract for-hire work, leased workers, or general contractor payments which are not direct sales as a merchant to a consumer.

The other most often used 1099 form would come as a 1099-Int; this is a 1099 received for interest income purposes; whether the income be from a lending institution, or from the sale of a seller financed mortgage, the recipient of any income from interest will receive a 1099-Int. A close relative of the 1009-Int is the 1099 OID. This is an information return provided when you receive an original issue discount, usually from transactions related to mortgages served by the Federal Housing Authority.

Another 1099 can come as a 1099 B for barter exchange transactions. What does this mean? It means that instead of monetary payment, you received a bartered form of payment, an exchange of something other than money, with value attached in order to pay for a service.

1099 C is received if there is a cancellation of debt, as from a bankruptcy proceeding, credit card default, or other failure of a maker to make good on a debt that the lender or seller can use as a tax deduction. The 1099 CAP is a 1099 used to report significant changes in corporate control and capital structure. What does this mean in laymen’s terms? If you and several other individuals are in business together, as an incorporated entity, and 3 of you buyout another individual, you will be required to furnish that individual with a 1099 CAP so that the individual reports any income or gain from the capital sale of stock.

A 1099 that we’ve not seen very much until recently, but one that I’m sure we’ll see much more of in the not too distant future is the 1099 LTC. Long-term care and accelerated death benefits are filed on this 1099; with a larger segment of our population aging, this will make more use of long-term care insurance and payouts, and many of them will receive types of 1099s.

Although these are most often forms of taxable income to the recipient, this is not always a steadfast rule. For many older citizens, and for individuals receiving the returns as part of a discounted program through the government, and for certain other situations, these are only information returns that do not result in added tax liability. For the rest of us a 1099 usually means we have increased tax liability.