| February 2011
If you’re the owner of even a single unit of rental property, starting this year you must start tracking all vendors doing at least $600 worth of work for you. Federal law now requires you to send them an IRS 1099 form.
The requirement to track vendors and issue 1099 forms isn’t new—it’s something that larger rental property owners already must do. But last year when the federal government enacted the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (H.R. 5297), it expanded this requirement to all property owners, no matter how small. Even property owners who are just doing rental as a sideline—maybe as part of a family investment fund or as part of a retirement savings plan—are now considered to be “conducting a trade or business,” so the 1099 reporting requirement now applies to them.