The term “1099″ gets thrown about by recruiters and staffing managers enough that I may use it unknowingly, without explaining it. Taken out of context, I am sure it leaves some people clueless to its meaning, for which I apologize. No, it doesn’t mean I am talking about double-agents or anything cool like national security. It is actually just boring tax stuff. Watch and see…

Wisegeek notes the following information about 1099 forms and what it means for employers/employees:

In the world of income and taxation, corporations, small businesses, and other employers use a variety of forms to record the income earned by an employee or an independent contractor. Typically, employees of a business receive a W-2 form that lists the income they received during the year. This form also contains deductions taken from that income in the form of federal and state taxes, deferred compensation and social security contributions, to name a few. 1099 forms are used for a number of reasons, though, typically, they are given to independent contractors–also known as “freelancers”–as a record of the income they received from a particular business. [more]

Often, in the staffing realm, a person may be referred to as a 1099 (“ten-ninety-nine”) when they want to work as an independent contractor versus a W-2 (“double-u-two”), which represents a standard employee. A similar term is “S-Corp”, referring to an actual business a person may create (.PDF) for themselves or a partnership, in which they still pay taxes through their personal income tax forms rather than the corporation paying its own taxes. (Whew, I knew those classes in Entrepreneurship would come in handy! Thanks Steve Gibson!)

Yes, believing that you live a secret double life as a “1099″ might be fun, unless you hate doing taxes, then you might want to stick with the plain vanilla W-2 crowd like most of the planet.

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