US year end and 1099 reporting
Who you paid, how much, and by which rail, for the US tax year. Why we do not tell you which form to file.
Every January the same question arrives: what do I file for my affiliates. This page is the answer, and the short version is that the filing is yours, the data is here, and the form depends on how the money was sent.
Tax management features are provided for informational administrative purposes only. AffiliateRail is not a tax adviser. Customers must independently evaluate 1099/1099-K filing requirements with qualified professionals based on their chosen payment processors.
Why it is yours and not ours
Payouts are non-custodial. Your own PayPal, Wise or Payoneer account pays your partner, using credentials you connected, and the money never passes through us. That makes you the payer of record. We were never in the flow of funds, so we have nothing to report and you have everything to report.
That is not a limitation of the product. It is the same fact that keeps our fee at zero on the money you move.
The threshold
$2,000 for payments made in 2026, per person for the year rather than per payout. It was raised from $600 by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with effect from 1 January 2026. Most articles you will find still say $600, because most of them were written before the change.
From 2027 the figure is adjusted for inflation each year and is published annually. Where we do not know it, the dashboard says so rather than showing you last year's number.
Why there is no "box" column
There is a real trap here and it is worth thirty seconds.
Money sent over a third-party settlement network, which includes PayPal, is reported by that processor on a 1099-K. Money sent by direct ACH or wire is not, and is where a 1099-NEC from you normally applies. A merchant who files a 1099-NEC for a payment the processor has already reported on a 1099-K has reported the same money twice, and the affiliate is the one who has to sort it out.
Our own rails land on both sides of that line. PayPal is likely the processor's report. Bank transfer and wire are likely yours. Wise and Payoneer depend on how your account with them is set up, and only you can find that out.
So the export tells you what you paid, to whom, and by which rail, and stops there. Naming a form for you would be us making a classification we are not qualified to make and you would be the one who carries it.
The export
Tax forms, then US payouts. Pick a tax year and download the CSV.
It has one row per person per payout method, because a partner paid half by PayPal and half by wire is two different reporting questions and one combined total hides the fact that decides them.
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
partner_id | The partner in your program |
legal_name, business_name, tax_classification | From their W-9 |
tin_type, tin | The number they certified, in full |
address_line_1 to postal_code | Their W-9 address |
payout_method | The rail. This is the column your accountant needs |
payouts | How many payouts made up the amount |
amount_paid, currency | What you actually paid them that calendar year |
form_readable | no when the stored form could not be decrypted, so blanks are explained rather than silent |
The file opens with four comment lines carrying the year, the threshold and the notice above. If your filing service wants a bare header, delete them.
Who is in it
Everyone with a submitted W-9 who you paid in that calendar year. The W-9 is the declaration that makes someone a US person for this purpose, so it is the test, not their country: a US citizen living abroad still files a W-9, and a non-US person files a W-8 and is not in this export.
Partners are listed whatever they were paid, not only those over the threshold, because you usually want to see the whole picture and add the methods up yourself. The dashboard tells you how many crossed it.
A partner who asked to be erased under a data request stays in this export, under the legal name on their sealed tax form. This is the one place they still appear, because the export answers the tax authority whose retention period the form is kept under: see privacy and your data.
What we never do
- We never file anything, for you or for anyone.
- We never check a TIN against the IRS and never run identity checks.
- We never tell you which form applies.
- We never see the money.
Collect, store, export. Your accountant does the rest.