1099 filing is included in every bookkeeping plan at no extra cost. Business returns are prepared from a year that was closed month by month, not reconstructed from a shoebox in March.
1099 filing costs nothing extra. Preparing and e-filing your Form 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC at year end is included in every monthly bookkeeping plan, with no per form fee and no January surcharge.
It is included rather than sold as an add-on because what makes a 1099 accurate is vendor setup and correct categorization across the whole year, and we are doing that anyway. Charging for the January print run would be charging twice for the same work.
Business tax return preparation is quoted separately, because entity type, the number of states, the number of K-1s, and whether the year needs cleanup first all move it. That is a scoping conversation, not a formula.
Dates that fall on a weekend or a holiday shift to the next business day.
| Form | To the recipient | To the IRS |
|---|---|---|
| Form 1099-NEC, nonemployee compensation | January 31 | January 31 |
| Form 1099-MISC, rent and other payments | January 31 | March 31 if e-filed |
| Form W-2, employee wages | January 31 | January 31 |
| Form 1099-K, issued by payment processors | January 31 | Filed by the processor |
There is no extended IRS due date for Form 1099-NEC. That is the one people are most often surprised by, because the 1099-MISC they filed years ago did have one. Plan the whole year end around January 31 and nothing else on this table can catch you out.
| Entity | Return | Due | Extended |
|---|---|---|---|
| S corporation | Form 1120-S | March 15 | September 15 |
| Partnership or multi member LLC | Form 1065 | March 15 | September 15 |
| C corporation | Form 1120 | April 15 | October 15 |
| Sole proprietor or single member LLC | Schedule C with Form 1040 | April 15 | October 15 |
An extension moves the filing date, never the payment date. Tax owed is still due on the original deadline, and interest runs from that date whether or not you extended. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in small business tax, and it is entirely avoidable if the books are current enough in February to estimate the number.
| Quarter covered | Payment due |
|---|---|
| January through March | April 15 |
| April through May | June 15 |
| June through August | September 15 |
| September through December | January 15 of the next year |
The quarters are not equal lengths, which surprises almost everyone the first time. Clients on a monthly plan get their estimate updated as the year goes rather than in one guess each April.
The question that costs small businesses the most time in January, answered before January.
Sole proprietors, single member LLCs, partnerships, freelancers, and subcontractors, when you paid them in the course of your trade or business above the threshold for that year. This is the main case and it covers most of what a small business issues.
Payments to a law firm are reportable regardless of how the firm is organized. This is the exception people miss, because the general rule that corporations do not get a 1099 is otherwise reliable.
Rent paid to an unincorporated landlord goes on Form 1099-MISC, not 1099-NEC. Rent paid through a property manager is generally reported by the manager instead of by you.
A vendor whose W-9 shows a C corporation or S corporation generally does not get a 1099. This is exactly why the W-9 matters. Without one you are guessing at entity type, and guessing wrong in either direction creates work.
Payments made by credit card, debit card, or through a third party payment network are excluded, because the processor reports them on Form 1099-K. Issuing a 1099-NEC for a card payment double reports the vendor's income, which creates a notice for them, not for you.
Employees get a W-2. If you are unsure whether someone is a contractor or an employee, that is a worker classification question and it is worth answering before the payments start rather than after. The payroll page covers the employee side.
The $600 reporting threshold for Form 1099-NEC and Form 1099-MISC had stood since 1954. Under the 2025 tax law it rises to $2,000 for payments made during 2026, which are the forms filed in early 2027, and it is indexed for inflation after that.
Payments made during 2025 still use the $600 threshold on the forms filed in January 2026. So there is one filing season under each rule, which is exactly the kind of overlap that produces a mistake.
It means fewer forms for the small vendors you paid once or twice. It does not mean you can stop tracking those payments, because you cannot know which vendors cleared $2,000 for the year without adding up what you paid them. The tracking work is identical. Only the print run gets shorter.
It also does not change the deduction. Payments below the threshold are still fully deductible business expenses. The threshold governs whether an information return is required, not whether the expense counts, and those two things get conflated constantly.
Because this is a change with a live transition year, we would rather confirm the current figure against the instructions for your specific filing year than have you rely on a number you read on a website, this one included.
Most of what makes tax season painful is not the return. It is that the return is the first time all year anyone looked closely at the numbers. Twelve months of decisions get reconstructed in three weeks, under a deadline, by someone who was not there when any of them were made.
When the books were closed every month, the return is mostly a transcription. The reconciliations already tie, the fixed assets are already on a schedule, the loan balances already amortized, the owner draws are already out of the expense accounts, and the 1099 vendor list built itself as the year went because every vendor had a W-9 before their first payment cleared.
That is also why we treat the 1099s as included rather than as a January product. By the time January arrives, the work that makes them right has already happened.
Then the honest sequence is cleanup first, return second. Filing a return off books that do not tie is how a small problem becomes an amended return and a second fee. The catch-up and cleanup page prices that work, and if returns are unfiled for prior years we will tell you which ones actually still need filing before you pay to prepare any of them.
We will not sign a return we do not believe. If the numbers cannot be supported, the answer is to fix the numbers, not to file something defensible-looking and hope. That occasionally makes us slower than the alternative in March, and it is the entire reason clients stop worrying about the letter that might arrive in August.
In general, any unincorporated person or business you paid for services in the course of your trade or business, above the reporting threshold for that year. That covers sole proprietors, single member LLCs, partnerships, and most freelancers and subcontractors.
Corporations are generally exempt, with attorneys as the notable exception since payments to a law firm are reportable regardless of how it is organized. Payments made by credit card or through a third party payment network are excluded, because the processor reports those on Form 1099-K instead.
For payments made during 2026, filed in early 2027, the reporting threshold for Form 1099-NEC and Form 1099-MISC rises from $600 to $2,000 under the 2025 tax law, and it is indexed for inflation after 2026. Payments made during 2025 still use the $600 threshold on the forms filed in January 2026.
The practical effect is that fewer small vendors will need a form, but you still have to track the payments to know which side of the line each one lands on.
Form 1099-NEC is due to the recipient and to the IRS by January 31, with no extended filing date for the IRS copy. Form 1099-MISC is due to the recipient by January 31 in most cases, and to the IRS by February 28 on paper or March 31 when filed electronically.
January 31 is the date to plan around, because gathering W-9s in the last week of January is where this goes wrong every year.
If you file 10 or more information returns in total for the year, yes. The 10 return threshold is calculated by aggregating all information return types together, so W-2s, 1099-NECs, and 1099-MISCs count toward one combined total rather than each having their own count.
Most small businesses cross that line faster than they expect. We e-file everything regardless of count.
Nothing extra. Year end 1099 preparation and e-filing is included in every monthly bookkeeping plan at no additional charge, with no per form fee and no year end surcharge.
It is included rather than priced as an add-on because the work that makes 1099s accurate is vendor setup and correct categorization during the year, which we are doing anyway.
S corporation and partnership returns are due March 15 for a calendar year business. C corporation returns and sole proprietor Schedule C filings, which ride on the personal return, are due April 15.
Extensions move the filing date by six months but they do not move the payment date, so tax owed is still due on the original deadline.
Return preparation is quoted separately from bookkeeping, because the price is driven by entity type, the number of states you file in, the number of owners receiving a K-1, and whether the year needs cleanup before it can be filed.
We are not going to publish a single number for it the way we publish the bookkeeping fee schedule, because a return quoted off a formula would be wrong more often than right. Ask us and we will scope your actual situation.
Sometimes, and it depends on what shape the books are in. A clean, reconciled set of books from another provider is straightforward.
A trial balance that does not tie, or a year that was never closed, has to be fixed before anyone can responsibly sign a return, and that fix is catch-up work rather than tax work. We look first and tell you which one you have before quoting anything.
Penalties are charged per form and increase the longer the form goes unfiled, with a substantially higher penalty for intentional disregard and no cap at all in that case.
There is also a knock-on risk: a deduction for contractor labor is harder to defend when the corresponding information return was never filed. File late rather than not at all, because the penalty for a late form is far smaller than the penalty for a missing one.
Form W-9 is how a vendor gives you their legal name, entity type, and taxpayer identification number. Collect it before you pay anyone the first time, not in January.
A vendor who has already been paid and has moved on has no reason to answer your email, and if you cannot get a taxpayer identification number you are technically required to begin backup withholding at 24 percent. Making the W-9 a condition of the first payment removes the entire problem.
See what monthly bookkeeping costs for your business. Four questions, a real number, no email and no sales call.
See your priceTell us your entity type, what states you file in, and what shape the books are in. We will come back with a real quote, usually within one business day.
The dates and thresholds on this page are general information for South Carolina small businesses, current as of August 2026, and are not tax advice for your specific situation. Rules change and facts matter. Confirm anything you are about to act on with us or with your own advisor first.
