Drowning In A Sea of Paper

The sea levels are rising...You have been warned.

In the recently passed health care bill there was a little known and less talked about provision that found its way in. It is a provision that will require all businesses to issue 1099s to any entity that it pays more than $600 for the year.

Let that slowly sink in.

Currently, a business has to issue 1099s to unicorporated entities (who aren't employees) that provide more than $600 worth of services in a year. The important items of the previous sentence are unicorporated and services. Unicorporated has generally been taken to mean not having a federal identification number (individuals, for the most part). Services are not, generally, tangilbe products.

Under the code revision in the health care legislation, the only exlclusion for the issuance of a 1099 is that the transactions didn't exceed $600/per year for a given entity.

Think about that for a little while...I'll tell you what I think it means in a day or so.