W-9 for LLCAsk on the day the vendor starts
Owners discover a pile of missing forms when information returns are due. The kinder moment was the day you hired them.
Talk about the vendor list
Their election, not yours.
You do not fix a vendor's box for them. If the box is nonsense, ask them to match their own return. Do not write over it. A form you rewrote is a form you signed, and you do not know their election.
No form, no first payment, is the only habit that works when the vendor is still eager to start. After they have been paid all year, your leverage is a memory. Memories lose to busy Decembers.
A three-week job can swallow the habit if you wait. Hire someone for a short stand and still collect the form before the first draw, or January will treat the job as a mystery. We are not standing at the counter when you pay them. The paper has to be in the vendor file that same day, while they still want the work to start.
What ready looks like before the season.
Set the vendor to be tracked for information returns when you create the vendor, not when you are tired. Map contractors to a contractor account. Map rent, legal, and medical apart from that. A catch-all feels kind until the form asks for boxes.
Payments through a card or a processor stay off the payer's NEC. The processor has the report. Leaving them in the list is how a vendor gets two forms for one set of dollars and calls you angry in February.
Checks with no payee cannot be reported and cannot be defended. A sweep for blank payees belongs in the monthly close. It does not belong in the last week of January, next to everything else you postponed.
The owner's own payments.
Amounts you paid from a personal account and then booked through equity can still be company payments. The company is the payer in substance. Leaving them off the list because the bank account was not the operating account is a quiet miss.
The close should show those payments with a payee name. Equity is not a shredder. It is a place to record what the owner did for the company, including payments the company now has to consider for an information return.
We build that list with you in the fall if the books are in scope. The list is a product of the close. It is not a separate personality that appears in January and demands a weekend.
A short list is a fine list.
If you paid three vendors, the work is three forms. Do not let a template convince you that a small company needs a ceremony. The ceremony is for companies that paid hundreds. Yours might need an afternoon.
If a vendor refuses the form, you already know the backup-withholding problem may be yours as the payer. The instructions have the rate and the rule. This page will not invent a workaround that skips the form.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice. Say how many vendors are missing papers. That number, even a rough one, is enough to tell a five-minute habit from a cleanup.
How late is the vendor list
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.