What Freelancers Should Know About the IRS & Venmo

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 has a provision for businesses that you may not be aware of, and it certainly seems to be making waves across the internet lately. In fact, the Internet Association even wrote a letter to Congress protesting it.

Section 9674 of ARPA amended certain sections of the Internal Revenue Code, including tightening the de minimis exception, lowering the threshold for reporting third-party settlement network payments on Form 1099-K to $600 starting in January 2022. Currently, 1099-K's are only required when users of cash apps such as Venmo receives over $20,000 in goods and services transactions and has more than 200 transactions for goods and services transactions in a calendar year. 

Venmo is a cash app, or digital wallet, owned by PayPal used to send and receive money.

While the tax reporting by Third Party Settlement Organizations (TPSOs) is changing, requiring them to report transactions made for goods and services made by customers with $600 or more in annual gross sales on 1099-K forms, these changes in 1099-K reporting didn’t change tax obligations.

Form 1099-K, Payment Card and Third-Party Network Transactions, is simply an IRS information return used to report payment transactions to improve voluntary tax compliance. If you're using Venmo, or other cash apps to receive business income, you should have been reporting that income all along, and so you have nothing to worry about. The ARPA measure only applies to transactions for commercial sales of goods and services, which are already considered taxable income.