If you paid the contractor more than $600 for doing work for your trade or business, then you are required to send the form by 1/31/2018.
The IRS may or may not notice your forms are late and impose a fine. The fine does go up the longer you wait, so it's best to do it sooner rather than later or not at all.
The IRS imposes penalties for failure to file information returns with the IRS on a timely basis (as well as the failure to furnish returns to payees on a timely basis). In addition, the IRS may also assess penalties if a filer fails to include all of the information required to be shown on a return (e.g., taxpayer's TIN) or reports incorrect information (e.g., incorrect dollar amount). Please note, the penalties have increased for Tax Year 2017.
- If you correctly file within 30 days of deadline: $50 per form ($532,000 max)
- If you correctly after 30 days and by August 1, 2017: $100 per form ($1,596,000 max)
- If you correctly file after August 1, 2017: $260 per form ($3,193,000 max)
The IRS reduces max fines for each tier by $186,000, $532,000 and $1,064,000, respectively for filers that are small businesses with less than $5 million in gross receipts for the past three years.
