1096 Form – Preparing it in The Right Way

For those who are not aware of what the 1096 form is, it is a summary form that is used to summarize different kinds of forms like the 1099, 1098, 5498 and the W2G forms. What this means is that anyone who uses any of these forms to declare taxes withheld, needs to also prepare a corresponding summary 1096 form too. One IRS 1096 form needs to be prepared for each of the different kinds of forms that you may have generated. For the purpose of explanation, we use 1099 forms that need to be summarized using the IRS 1096 here.

Steps to take to Prepare IRS 1096

The first thing that you need to do is to get all the 1099 forms together. Personal details like the payee’s name, identification number, contact details and Social Security Number need to be entered. You also need to state the kind of form that you are summarizing, which in this case is form 1096. There are different boxes provided in the IRS 1096. The details that need to be included are total income or payment from all the form 1099’s and the federal taxes withheld across these forms. It is good practice to check the summation.

Point to Remember When Filing IRS 1096 Form

While preparing the form is easy, especially with tax software, you need to remember that the form 1096 only contains information for the forms being submitted manually. Those that are filed electronically, if at all, should not be included in the summation of the figures. This means that you may have to omit some forms in the tax software. Using pre-printed forms is a relatively better idea and for the sake of uniformity, you should file everything manually rather than split the whole affair.