Fewer 1099s in the mail: the $2,000 threshold now applies to 2026 payments

This is the first year the new paperwork floors actually apply to the money you are invoicing. For payments made on or after January 1, 2026, a client only has to send you (and the IRS) a 1099-NEC or 1099-MISC once they have paid you $2,000 in the year, up from the $600 floor that had stood since the 1950s. The figure gets indexed to inflation from 2027.

Payment apps and marketplaces are settled too: the 1099-K threshold stays at $20,000 AND more than 200 transactions after the IRS confirmed the reversion in its FAQs.

What it changes for you: less mail in January, not less tax. Every dollar is still taxable and still belongs in your books whether or not a form arrives; the IRS said exactly that in its FAQs. If your records lean on 1099s to reconstruct the year, this is the season to stop: our 1099 take-home calculator works from your real gross, forms or no forms.

Our take: good riddance to the $600 floor, but for a lot of clients self-tracked books stopped being good practice and became the only reliable record.