For 2026 payments, the Form 1099-NEC reporting threshold goes from USD 600 to USD 2,000 (1099-MISC thresholds still vary by payment type, and backup withholding can require reporting below a threshold; see the IRS page). If you keep the books for a small business, or write scripts for someone who does, this year's vendor list needs a fresh pass.

The awkward part isn't the threshold; it's the export. Here's a small, defensive way to turn a messy payments export into a reviewable vendor worksheet. This is data preparation, not tax advice.

The problems in a typical export

  • The same vendor appears as Acme Plumbing LLC, ACME PLUMBING and Acme Plumbing, L.L.C.
  • QuickBooks reports (e.g. Transaction List by Vendor) put title lines above the header, put the vendor name on its own "group" row, and add Total for … rows, which double-count if you sum naively
  • Dates in several formats, some blank or TBD
  • Amounts like $1,200.00, (450.00) and -$75
  • Payments from other years mixed in

Rules that keep the totals honest

  1. Find the real header row. Skip leading lines until a row has at least two header-like cells (date, amount, name, vendor, memo).
  2. Inherit the vendor from group rows and skip Total for / TOTAL rows.
  3. Group by vendor ID if you have one; otherwise by exact name (case, punctuation and spacing normalised). Don't merge Acme LLC and Acme Inc automatically. Flag them as possible same vendor and let a human confirm.
  4. Never guess a date. Unparseable or missing dates go to a review list, not into the year's total.
  5. Never drop a bad amount silently. Invalid amounts go to the review list too.
  6. Reconcile. Input total = this year's total + other years + review rows. If that doesn't hold, stop.
  7. Report TIN presence, not TIN values. The worksheet only needs a yes/no.

A compact Python version 

import csv, re, datetime, collections def money(s): s = (s or "").replace("$", "").replace(",", "").replace("USD", "").strip() neg = s.startswith("(") and s.endswith(")") or s.startswith("-") s = s.strip("()-") try: return -float(s) if neg else float(s) except ValueError: return None def year_of(s): for fmt in ("%Y-%m-%d", "%m/%d/%Y", "%m/%d/%y", "%b %d, %Y", "%d %b %Y"): try: return datetime.datetime.strptime((s or "").strip(), fmt).year except ValueError: pass return None # -> review, never assumed  def key(name): k = re.sub(r"['\u2019`.]", "", name.lower()) return re.sub(r"[^a-z0-9]+", " ", k).strip() raw = list(csv.reader(open("payments.csv", encoding="utf-8-sig"))) hi = next(i for i, r in enumerate(raw) if sum(bool(re.search(r"date|amount|name|vendor|memo", c, re.I)) for c in r) >= 2) hdr = [h.strip() for h in raw[hi]] iD, iA = hdr.index("Date"), hdr.index("Amount") iN = hdr.index("Name") if "Name" in hdr else None totals, review, group = collections.defaultdict(float), [], "" tin_total = inc = other = rev = 0.0 for line, r in enumerate(raw[hi + 1:], start=hi + 2): cells = [c.strip() for c in r] if not any(cells): continue first = next(c for c in cells if c) if re.match(r"^(total|grand total)\b", first, re.I): continue if sum(bool(c) for c in cells) == 1 and money(first) is None: group = first continue name = (cells[iN] if iN is not None else "") or group amt, yr = money(cells[iA]), year_of(cells[iD]) if amt is not None: tin_total += amt if amt is None or yr is None or not name: review.append((line, name, cells[iA], cells[iD])) rev += amt or 0 continue if yr != 2026: other += amt continue totals[key(name)] += amt inc += amt assert abs(tin_total - (inc + other + rev)) < 0.005, "totals don't reconcile" for k, v in sorted(totals.items(), key=lambda kv: -kv[1]): print(f"{k:40s} {v:12,.2f} {'AT/OVER 2,000' if v >= 2000 else ''}") print(len(review), "rows need review")

Swap the column names for your export. In real use you'd also keep the original spelling for display, add the look-alike check (strip llc|inc|ltd|co|corp and compare) as a flag rather than a merge, and carry a tin_present column if the export has one.

Don't want to run Python?

Disclosure: we built a browser version of exactly these rules: https://csv.thetrilliumcompany.com/1099/tool/ . It runs entirely in the browser, so the file is never uploaded. The preview is free; downloading the worksheet, the review list and the change log is USD 19. There's a before/after sample with fictional data at https://csv.thetrilliumcompany.com/1099/ . I'm Peter at The Trillium Company (Waterloo, Ontario); questions are welcome in the comments.