By Jonathan Sweet, Editor in Chief
Posted 3/7/11
The battle to repeal the new 1099 requirements continues to move at a glacial pace.
(In case you missed it, you're going to have to start issuing a bunch more 1099s in 2012 if nothing changes. The requirement was included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed last year. You can read more in our earlier coverage.)
The U.S. House on Friday passed a repeal of the 1099 requirement, following the Senate's action last month. In a sensible world, this would mean we're all set to remove this paperwork burden from small businesses.
Unfortunately, the two houses passed different repeal bills. The biggest issue? How to pay for the more than $20 billion in extra revenue that the tougher 1099 standards were supposed to capture.
The House passed a stand-alone bill that would fund the shortfall by taking the money away from paying for tax subsidies in the healthcare reform package. The Senate, on the other hand, included the repeal as an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration's annual authorization act. The Senate directed the Office of Management and Budget to make up the shortfall with unspent federal funds.
The same scenario played out last year, as multiple attempts to repeal the 1099 requirement went nowhere in Congress as everyone tried to tie their pet project to it or use repeal to kill a program they disliked.
You've got something President Obama and three-quarters of representative and senators say they want repealed and they still can't get it taken care of. If they can't get this done, we can forget about the hard stuff.