The 1099-K threshold is back to $20,000: what it means for your card sales

Labor Day weekend is here, and for a lot of vendors it marks the start of the busiest run of card sales all year — the fall and holiday Markets and Festivals where a card reader gets tapped far more often than it did over a quieter summer. That makes this a good moment to clear up something that's been genuinely confusing the last few tax years: what actually triggers a 1099-K form from the payment processor behind your card reader, and what changed this year.

What a 1099-K actually is

A 1099-K is an information return that a payment processor — the company behind your card reader, or a platform like Etsy if you sell there too — sends both to you and to the IRS, reporting the total card and third-party payments that ran through your account in a year. It isn't a bill, and it isn't the only place your income shows up; it's a paper trail meant to help the IRS match what processors report against what taxpayers report on their own returns.

The threshold has been a moving target

For a few years, this got genuinely confusing, even for accountants. The rule going back to 2011 set the reporting threshold at $20,000 in payments and more than 200 transactions in a year — a bar high enough that most individual vendors never crossed it on card sales alone. A 2021 law scheduled that threshold to drop all the way to $600 with no transaction minimum, phased in gradually: $5,000 for 2024, and a further step down after that. If you've seen conflicting numbers floating around — $600, $2,500, $5,000 — that's why; different sources were describing different points in a phase-down that kept getting delayed.

What changed: the threshold reverted to $20,000

Legislation signed in mid-2025 undid that phase-down. The IRS has confirmed the Form 1099-K threshold for third-party network transactions is back to its original $20,000-and-more-than-200-transactions bar, applied retroactively back to 2022. Practically, that means a solo vendor running card sales through a typical reader is far less likely to receive a 1099-K than the lower thresholds would have required — most individual booths simply don't move $20,000 through one processor in a year, even across a full fall and holiday run.

What this does not change

Here's the part worth repeating even to vendors who are relieved by that number: every dollar you take at a booth is taxable income whether or not a 1099-K ever shows up. The threshold only decides when a processor is required to send you a form and file a copy with the IRS — it has never had anything to do with what you owe. A vendor who stays under $20,000 in card sales through one processor this year still owes tax on every one of those sales, reported the same way as always. Treating "no 1099-K" as "no reporting required" is the mistake worth avoiding here.

A few things worth doing regardless of the number

• Keep your own running total. Don't wait for a form to tell you what you made. Whatever you use to track sales — a notebook, a spreadsheet, or software built for it — should already have the real number, independent of any processor's paperwork.
• Expect more than one form, or none at all. If you take payments through more than one processor — a card reader for in-person sales, plus an online platform — each one applies the threshold separately to its own transactions. It's entirely normal to clear the bar with one and not the other, or to get no 1099-K at all and still owe tax on everything you sold.
• Reconcile if one does arrive. If a 1099-K does show up, check it against your own records before you file. Processors report gross payment volume, which can include things like sales tax collected at the register or a refund that hasn't been backed out yet — figures that don't automatically match your actual taxable income.
• Don't assume this year's rule is permanent. Reporting thresholds have moved twice in a few years already. It's worth a quick check each fall, rather than assuming whatever applied last season still applies to this one.

Why this matters more heading into the stacked season

The run of fall and holiday Events ahead is exactly when card volume climbs fastest — more Markets in a shorter window, more transactions per weekend, and for some vendors, an online push layered on top. That's precisely the stretch where it's easy to lose track of a running total in the noise of a busy calendar, and precisely why the habit matters more than the threshold number does. Whether or not a form ever lands in your inbox in January, the sales themselves are the thing that counts.

Keeping every booth's sales logged as they happen — inside the Tracker rather than reconstructed from memory in April — means you already have your own real number whenever tax season arrives, with or without a processor's form to check it against.

A quick disclaimer

This is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation — reporting thresholds, what counts as gross payment volume, and how a given processor handles refunds and sales tax can all vary. Confirm anything that affects your own return with a CPA or other licensed tax professional before you file.

Artisans Almanac offers a 30-day free trial if you want this fall's booth sales logged in one place as they happen, instead of reconstructed later from whatever forms show up.