If you own a rental property, 2026 brought new changes that will affect you. The good news? They’re not as complicated as they sound. Here is everything you need to know.
First, What Is a 1099 Form?
A 1099 form is simply what the IRS uses to track money that changes hands outside of a regular paycheck.
As a landlord, you deal with two main types. There is a form you need to send contractors you hire throughout the year, like a plumber, painter, or a handyman. And there is the form your payment platform sends to you when tenants pay rent.
The Two Changes You Need to Know About
Change 1: You no longer have to send a form to every contractor you pay over $600.
Under the old rule, if you paid any individual contractor $600 or more in a year, you were required to send them a 1099-NEC tax form. Starting in 2026, that threshold jumped to $2,000.
In practical terms, this means a one-time repair job or a small landscaping contract may no longer trigger any paperwork on your end. That’s less admin work and fewer forms to file each January.
Change 2: Payment apps will no longer flood you with tax forms for small amounts.
Over the past couple of years, there was a rule that required platforms like Venmo, PayPal, and Zelle to send you a 1099-K for any year where you received $600 or more through their platform. That caused a lot of confusion collecting rent digitally. That rule has been reversed. In 2026, a payment platform only sends you a 1099-K if you received more than $20,000 and had more than 200 transactions in the year. For most landlords with a small to mid-sized portfolio, this means you will not receive that form at all.
What Did Not Change
Not everything shifted. The 1099-MISC form, which is used in certain rent-related situations, still has a threshold of $600.
And most importantly, the deadline for all of these forms is still January 31st of the following year. So, for the 2026 tax year, any 1099s you need to file are due January 31, 2027.
Does the Higher Threshold Mean You Can Stop Tracking Contractor Payments?
Not quite, the threshold went up, but most active landlords still have contractors who cross $2,000 over the course of a year.
Here is a realistic example. You have a handyman you call regularly. You pay him $350 in March, $400 in May, $500 in July, and $450 in October. That is $1,700 by October, and one more visit pushes you over. If you were not keeping track, you would not even know a 1099 was required until it was too late.
The contractors most likely to cross the $2,000 mark are plumbers and HVAC technicians, painters and flooring crews doing turnover work between tenants, landscapers and snow removal services on seasonal contracts, regular handymen and maintenance workers, and individual property managers you pay directly.
One important note: if you are paying a corporation or an LLC that is taxed as a corporation, you are generally not required to file a 1099 for that payment. This is why collecting a W-9 from every vendor before you pay them matters so much. That one form tells you everything you need to know about how to classify the payment.
What Happens If You Miss One?
Missing a 1099 is not just a minor oversight. The IRS charges penalties per form, and those penalties increase the longer you wait.
If you file within 30 days of the deadline, the penalty is $60 per form. Wait until after that window but file before August 1st, and it jumps to $130 per form. Miss the August 1st cutoff entirely or simply never file, and you are looking at $330 per form. In cases where the IRS determines it was intentional, the penalty goes up to $660 per form with no maximum cap.
To put that in perspective, a landlord with ten contractors who misses every filing could owe $3,300 in penalties before any interest is added. That is a completely avoidable cost with the right tracking system in place from the start of the year.
How FONDiFi Takes This Off Your Plate
Keeping a running total of what you have paid each vendor, matching it to their W-9 on file, and knowing exactly when you cross the threshold sounds manageable until you are doing it manually across multiple properties and a dozen different vendors.
FONDiFi’s bookkeeping team works directly inside the software you are already using, including AppFolio, Buildium, and QuickBooks. We track every vendor payment throughout the year so that when January arrives, you are not scrambling through old bank statements. Your 1099 list is already built, reviewed, and ready to file.
If your vendor records are not in great shape right now, that is okay. Our property management bookkeeping services include a year-end 1099 cleanup and filing package that gets everything sorted for you.
The Bottom Line
Two things changed for landlords in 2026. The bar for sending a 1099 to a contractor went from $600 to $2,000, and the threshold for receiving a 1099-K from a payment platform jumped from $600 all the way back to $20,000 with more than 200 transactions.
Both changes reduce your paperwork. But they do not eliminate the need to track contractor payments throughout the year, because most active landlords still have vendors who cross the new threshold.
The best thing you can do right now is make sure every vendor has a W-9 on file and that someone is keeping a running total of what you have paid them. If that someone is not you, it should be FONDiFi.
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