As you have seen, all the information from the IRS is old and has not been updated. Since Form 1099-NEC is basically replacing 1099-MISC box 7, I'm assuming that everything the IRS said in the past about 1099-MISC box 7 now applies to Form 1099-NEC. Honda seems to have made the same assumption. There's no reason that the procedures would have changed. This is a very obscure provision, and obviously doesn't get a lot of attention from the IRS. They are overloaded with last-minute and retroactive major changes in the tax laws, and probably don't have the manpower to deal with the effect of a form change on a little-used procedure.
I suggest that you go ahead and file the way that I outlined. The worst that can happen is that you get a computer-generated letter from the IRS. That could happen anyway, even with a 1099-MISC in previous years, as I said in my earlier post. Your reply to the letter will get reviewed by a person, not a computer, and the person will straighten it out.
