NNA welcomes rollback of tax reporting law

Sep 15, 2011

National Newspaper Association President Elizabeth K. Parker welcomed today’s 87-12 Senate vote to restore 1099 tax form reporting to 2010 levels and eliminate a threatening new burden on small businesses. Parker is co-publisher of Recorder Community Newspapers in Stirling, NJ.

The Senate adopted a bi-partisan measure that would jettison new rules for much wider reporting of businesses’ payments for goods and services. Without today’s repeal, businesses would have been required to report to the Internal Revenue Service each year their payments for virtually all products and services, including purchases of office supplies, advertising, rent and other common payments—even made to corporations that already report those revenues as income—if totals exceeded an annual $600 threshold.

The impending implementation of 1099 requirements, set to go into effect on Dec. 31, 2011, had already begun to affect small newspapers as their vendors were requiring W-9 statements with taxpayer IDs to set up massive compliance systems.

“This 1099 expansion was intended to capture scofflaws who don’t pay their taxes, but instead it simply saddled small businesses with a lot of new accounting expense,” Parker said. “According to a study by the Small Business Administration, the cost of complying with the tax code is already 66 percent higher for small businesses than for large businesses. This 1099 burden, just as many community newspapers are beginning to find economic recovery, would have been a severe setback.”

The Senate’s vote today overcame a proposed amendment by Rep. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, that would have modified but not rolled back the new 1099 rules.

Parker thanked members of NNA’s Congressional Action Team for their work with congressional delegations in helping them understand the impact of the new 1099 reporting.

“Congress passed this provision during the health care reform bill with the belief it would bring in $17 billion in tax payments from scofflaws,” Parker said. “But it became quickly clear that the expense of compliance, both by businesses and by the IRS, could outweigh the benefits. Plus, it simply added to the headaches of businesses that fairly pay their taxes. Congress was wise to rethink its action and let us get back to focusing on how to improve our local economies and run our newspapers.”