Form 1099-NEC is the tax form a business files to report payments of $600 or more made to an independent contractor during the year, separate from the W-2 filed for employees.
The form reports nonemployee compensation specifically, and it has to be sent to both the contractor and the IRS, generally by the end of January following the tax year. A direct consequence of worker classification: a 1099 contractor gets a 1099-NEC, a W-2 employee gets a W-2, and treating the same type of payment inconsistently across contractors is a common way misclassification gets noticed.
Late or missing 1099-NEC filings carry real IRS penalties per form, and they compound with every contractor a company forgot to file for, part of why collecting a W-9 from every contractor upfront, before the first payment, matters more than it seems like it should at the time.
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