1099-NEC, 1099-K and T4A: the tax forms freelancers receive

Early each year, forms start arriving from clients and payment companies. Each one tells the IRS or the CRA what someone paid you. None of them decides what you owe. Your own records do.

That matters more for tax year 2026, because a 2025 US law changed when clients have to send a 1099-NEC, and payment apps went back to an older, higher threshold for the 1099-K. You may receive fewer forms for 2026 than for 2025 while owing tax on exactly the same income.

This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Check with a tax professional about your own situation.

US forms at a glance

Form 1099-NEC

A 1099-NEC reports nonemployee compensation: what a business paid you, as an independent contractor, for your work.

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed in 2025, raised the reporting threshold from $600 to $2,000 for payments made after December 31, 2025. The IRS now describes these changes under the name Working Families Tax Cuts. The threshold will be adjusted for inflation starting in calendar year 2027. In practice:

• Forms for 2025 work, which arrived in early 2026, still used $600.
• For 2026 work, a client who paid you $1,900 does not have to send you a 1099-NEC.
• The same $2,000 threshold now applies to most 1099-MISC payments that used to start at $600.

Clients must send the form to you and to the IRS by January 31. For 2026 payments, January 31, 2027 is a Sunday, so the deadline becomes Monday, February 1, 2027.

Two exceptions can explain a missing form:

• Corporations. Payments to a corporation, including an LLC taxed as a C or S corporation, generally do not go on a 1099-NEC. Legal services are the exception. If you have incorporated, you may get none.
• Card and payment app payments. If a client paid you by credit card or through a payment network, that payment belongs on a 1099-K from the payment company, not on the client’s 1099-NEC. That keeps the same dollars from being reported twice.

Form 1099-K

A 1099-K comes from a payment settlement entity: either the bank or processor that handles your card payments, or a third party settlement organization (TPSO), meaning a payment app or online marketplace.

• Card payments: there is no minimum. Any amount can produce a form.
• Payment apps and marketplaces: they have to file only if your payments are over $20,000 and over 200 transactions in the year. The 2025 law brought back this older threshold retroactively, replacing the lower ones that had been scheduled.
• A TPSO may still send a form below the threshold, and some states have lower thresholds of their own.

Box 1a shows the gross amount, with no adjustment for fees, refunds, shipping, discounts or credits. Those items are not income, and you subtract them when you report. A 1099-K that is higher than what reached your bank account can still be correct, for exactly that reason.

The form is due to you by January 31.

When a US form is wrong or missing

If a form is wrong:

1. Contact the issuer named in the Filer box and ask for a corrected form. The IRS cannot correct it for you.
2. Keep copies of the corrected form and all your messages.
3. If the correction does not arrive in time, do not hold your return. File with the right numbers and keep your proof. For a 1099-K that includes amounts that are not income, the IRS explains how to back them out on Schedule 1.

If a form never arrives, report the income anyway, from your own invoices and deposits. You do not need the form to file.

If the numbers do not match, the IRS may send a CP2000 notice. It is not a bill or an audit. It is a proposal to change your return based on what third parties reported. You reply within 30 days of the notice date (60 if you live outside the US), and you can disagree with a signed explanation and documents.

Why income counts without a form

Thresholds decide when a payer must send a form. They do not decide what is taxable. The IRS says you must report all income, including cash, whether or not you received a 1099.

That covers the client who paid you $1,900, the check from a friend’s business, a client abroad who may never send a form, and the marketplace sales under $20,000. All of it goes on Schedule C, and self-employment tax applies once your net earnings from self-employment reach $400. If you set money aside during the year as described in Quarterly taxes without the April panic, base it on what you were paid, not on the forms.

Canada: the T4A and what else to expect

Canada has no 1099. Employees get a T4. Self-employed people may get a T4A, the slip a business files when it pays someone fees for services outside an employment relationship.

• The amount goes in box 048, fees for services.
• A business generally issues one when it paid you more than $500 in the calendar year, not counting GST/HST and PST. It must also issue one if it withheld any tax, whatever the amount.
• Slips are due to you and to the CRA by the last day of February.

Do not count on getting one. The CRA has a moratorium on penalties for failing to report fees for services. From the 2025 tax year it lifted that moratorium only for trucking businesses paying Canadian-controlled private corporations in trucking. Elsewhere it remains in place, though the CRA still says businesses should issue the slip. So some clients send T4As and others do not.

Either way, you report all self-employment income on Form T2125. Box 048 amounts belong with your business income, not on the employment income lines.

If a slip is missing, ask the payer, then check CRA My Account. The CRA cannot give you a copy until the issuer files it. If you still cannot get it in time, estimate the amount from your records and include a note with the issuer’s name and address, the type of income, and what you are doing to get the slip. If you file electronically, keep those documents in case the CRA asks.

If a slip is wrong, ask the issuer for an amended slip, and report what you actually received.

Digital platforms. Under the CRA’s reporting rules for digital platform operators, platforms that facilitate personal services, rentals or sales of goods report information about their sellers to the CRA. They must also give each reportable seller a copy by January 31 of the following year. Sellers of goods with fewer than 30 sales totalling $2,800 or less in the period are excluded.

Reconcile the forms against your records

Forms are a check on your books, not a replacement for them. Once they arrive, set aside an hour and work through this list:

1. List what each client and platform paid you during the calendar year, based on when the money reached you. Your invoices and bank deposits are the source.
2. Match each form to a line on that list. Mark the clients who sent nothing.
3. Look for duplicates. A client who paid by card should not also send a 1099-NEC for the same payments. If one does, ask for a correction.
4. Check processor totals. Compare each 1099-K’s box 1a with your processor’s gross total, then list the fees, refunds and chargebacks you will deduct.
5. Strip out sales tax in Canada. T4A box 048 excludes GST/HST and PST, so compare it with your pre-tax revenue. Sales tax, GST and HST explains why that tax was never income.
6. Note timing gaps. A payment a client sent in late December may have reached you in January. Write it down and keep the proof.
7. Your income should be at least the total of your forms. If the forms add up to more than your records, find out why before you file.

Worked example

These numbers are made up. Jordan, a US designer, adds up 2026:

Jordan reports $28,800 of gross receipts and deducts the $190 of card fees as an expense. The $4,800 with no form is still income.

This is easier when business money stays in business accounts (Separate your business and personal money), when each month is already closed (a 30-minute monthly close), and when your receipts are in order (Keeping receipts the IRS and CRA will accept).

How Mintas helps

• Your US and Canadian bank and card accounts sync daily through Plaid, read-only, so every deposit is in one place to compare against the forms.
• Invoices are marked paid automatically when the matching deposit reaches your bank, so you can see what each client actually paid.
• Store your 1099s and T4As in the Vault, where each document gets a title, summary, date and tags, with full-text search.
• Export transactions, invoice PDFs and documents at any time, or email the export to your accountant.
• Mintas does not prepare or file tax forms, and it does not tell you what to report. It keeps the records you check the forms against.