Tax Blog/Blawg

Businesses should continue to monitor this legislation because the new Form 1099 requirement will have a significant impact on compliance and legislation in this regard could alleviate some of the complexity and costs associated with the new requirement.

As we’ve discussed previously at the TaxBlawg, a minor provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – Section 9006, which dramatically expands the requirements for reporting payments on Form 1099 – has become a hot-button issue in Congress.  Prior to the law, Form 1099 reporting was not required for payments for goods or (with some exceptions) payments to corporations.  Section 9006 expanded the Form 1099 requirement to cover such payments made to a single payee if the payments exceed an aggregate of $600 or more during a calendar year.

Over the summer, the small business lobby called foul, arguing that the expansion imposed an oppressive paperwork burden on small businesses.  Consequently, earlier this week, Senate Democrats and Republicans proposed dueling amendments to the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 to “fix” the expanded Form 1099 reporting requirement of Section 9006.  In the eternal spirit of politics, each party’s amendment failed because neither wanted to give the other credit for being the savior of small businesses.  Despite the failure of these amendments to Section 9006, the Senate passed the bill this afternoon, foreshadowing its likely enactment in the near future.

Although death and taxes might, according to Benjamin Franklin, be the only certainties in this world, Congress is surely striving to add another - that is, the certainty of uncertainty.  Congress, it seems, is committed to keeping taxpayers in as much doubt as possible for as long as possible about the status of a variety of important provisions that will affect both substantive tax liabilities and compliance obligations.