What’s a 1099?
A 1099 is technically the IRS’s 1099-MISC form. Every January, the IRS requires you to prepare one of these forms for rental owners and vendors who earned more than $600 from you over the year.
As 2013 winds to a close, we’d like to remind you about tax season.
Use Buildium to eFile your 1099s
Buildium offers the ability to eFile your 1099s directly with the IRS. We’ll print and mail the forms for you!
Get taxpayer IDs
Get taxpayer IDs for your rental owners and vendors now, so you don’t need to rush in January. Use the IRS W-9 form and then add it as a file to your Buildium rental owners and vendors.
Should you need it, here’s a copy of Buildium’s W-9 form.
Clean up the books, part one
Before you file those 1099s, it’s a good idea to get your accounting in order. Reconcile your bank accounts to help ensure accurate reports.
A bank reconciliation is a comparison between a company’s banking records in Buildium against your “real world” bank statements. Bank reconciliation is a great way to find typos, missing transactions, and duplicate transactions that could lead to inaccurate reports.
Buildium encourages you to reconcile your bank accounts each and every month. If you’ve fallen behind, no problem. Get caught up now and make it a New Year’s resolution for 2014.
Clean up the books, part two
Bank reconciliations are a great first step, but there’s more to do. They won’t catch everything.
Before you eFile, review your rental owner statements, income statements, and vendor ledgers. Make sure the numbers seem right. For example, if Main Street has a single $1,000/month lease and is showing $250,000 in income for the year, there’s probably something amiss.
Best practices from other customers
If you work with an accountant, ask them what they’ll need. Ditto for your customers’ accountants. Your larger clients may have specific reporting requirements that they’ll need to file your rental owners’ taxes for the year. Figuring this out in December or early January will help build customer satisfaction and assure your clients that they made a great choice.