Form 1099-K in 2026: the $20,000-and-200 test, and the end of the $600 rule

The $600 Form 1099-K rule is over — and, in law, it never took effect. For calendar 2026 payments, a third-party settlement organization files Form 1099-K for a payee only when the gross amount of reportable payments exceeds $20,000 and the number of transactions exceeds 200. The $600 figure still quoted in forums and older articles was the American Rescue Plan's test: delayed by transition notices, replaced on paper before it ever governed a filing season, repealed retroactively in 2025, and formally closed in September 2026. This page is that whole sequence, dated, with the document that makes each step so. It ends where every threshold page on this site ends: a reporting threshold is not a taxability line.

The test as it stands

Two tests sit inside Form 1099-K, and they are not the same test. The first is the third-party settlement organization test — the marketplace and platform test. Read both halves: the gross amount of reportable payment transactions to a payee must exceed $20,000, and the number of those transactions must exceed 200. Exceeds, on both sides — exactly $20,000, or exactly 200 transactions, does not cross it. Fact Sheet 2025-08 prints this as the operative rule for calendar 2025 and calendar 2026 reporting, and the Instructions for Form 1099-K print the same test at Box 1a as the de minimis exception.

How it got here

The dated sequence, from the statute and the notices themselves. Every $600 in it is the repealed ARPA-era amount, in its own year.

The sentence under all of it

A reporting threshold is not a taxability line. The IRS prints the same point on its Form 1099-K pages: the thresholds decide whether a form is filed, not whether income is taxable — and income is reported whether or not a form arrives, including income paid in cash, property, goods, or digital assets. Income is taxable from the first dollar. A seller, creator, or freelancer whose platform sends no form because the $20,000-and-200 test was not crossed reports the same income, on the same line, from their own records. Article 3 reads that rule where no form of any kind arrives; Article 14 reads it for the missing 1099-K specifically.

When a form does arrive

When the test is crossed and a Form 1099-K arrives, its number has a home. Box 1a is the gross amount of reportable payment transactions — figured without regard to fees, refunded amounts, shipping amounts, credits, discounts, or any other amounts — and for a sole proprietor it enters the return whole, at Schedule C, line 1. The pieces that are not supposed to stay inside the gross figure are placed by the return's own lines, not netted off the form: refunds on line 2, platform fees on line 10. Article 14 walks that gross figure to line 1 for a marketplace seller; Article 7 reads the same box for a solo creator.

And a form can arrive for sales that were never a business at all. Personal items and hobby sales sort before line 1, not after it: a personal item sold at a gain is figured on Form 8949 and Schedule D; a personal item sold at a loss produces no deductible loss; hobby income is not reported on Schedule C — it lands on Schedule 1, line 8j. Article 16 reads that triage — business, personal items, or hobby — in full.

What this page is not

This page closes a threshold question; it does not file anyone's return. It gives no filing advice and no instructions for a form already received — the articles linked above read the lines those questions land on. It also stops at the federal fence: state Form 1099-K thresholds are state law, outside this site's fence, and state taxes are not covered here.