The filing deadline that moves, and the one that does not

Information returns are due at the end of January following the year of payment, and the copy owed to the contractor is due on the same day. That is the rule everybody writes down. What most calendars leave out is that when the statutory date lands on a weekend, the deadline moves to the next business day — and it does so often enough that a business planning against “31 January” will be planning against the wrong date more years than not.

The dates WithholdWatch computes

These are stored already adjusted, not computed from a literal date at render time, because a deadline is the kind of thing that has to be right in a report someone files against — and getting it wrong by one day is the whole failure.

The date that does not move

The one that will not wait is the day you can still get a W-9. Every week between the crossing payment and January makes the form harder to collect, and by the time you are assembling returns the contractor has finished the job, moved on, and has no reason to answer. The filing deadline is a date on a calendar. The collection deadline is a decay curve, and it starts the day the work ends.

Electronic filing

The aggregate threshold for mandatory electronic filing counts across all your information return types together, not per form. A business filing a handful of 1099-NECs and a couple of other returns can be over the line without having filed many of any one kind. WithholdWatch shows the count and the published minimum side by side rather than telling you which side of it you are on and asking you to trust that.