Politics Kills Repeal of New 1099 Regulation

Back in June, lawmakers tacked a new 1099 reporting requirement into the Health Care Bill.  This requirement, if it holds up, will require all small businesses based in Smithtown to start issuing 1099s to all of their vendors and suppliers staring in 2012 (including Staples, Verizon, YellowPages, etc.).

Obviously, this portion of the Health Care Bill (really nice that this was actually part of a "Health Care" bill by the way), came under tight scrutiny and was attacked by both the small business community and small business CPAs.

In June I predicted that this portion of the Health Care Bill would not hold up and would be repealed sometime before 2012. I was almost right.  And then the politicians got involved.

As the attacks grew, many politicians decided to jump on the bandwagon and try to put together a repeal to the 1099 reporting requirement portion of the Health Care Bill that they voted to pass earlier in the year. Republicans and Democrats were both on board with the plan and started drafting new bills that would repeal the 1099 reporting requirements.

The Democrats were the first to get a bill on paper, however, they tried to bury some additional stipulations in this new bill, including a new tax on overseas businesses and putting an end to Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs).

With these new stipulations, the bill failed before it even got off the ground.

Maybe one day we can live in a society where each bill and each law pertains to one specific topic so that votes can be cast based on the task at hand and not based on all the other unrelated pork barrel nonsense that gets tacked onto bills. 

This way, when we have situations like this where the Republicans want something repealed and the Democrats want the same thing repealed, it can just be repealed without having to decide on whether or not a 4% tax on all copies of Lost Season 3 DVDs sold in Podunk, Idaho should get earmarked to fund a work study program.

Until then, all small businesses based in Smithtown should unite and contact their congressmen in an effort to ensure the 1099 reporting requirement set forth in this year's Health Care Bill gets repealed prior to 2012.