Ohio 1099 filing requirements

Ohio publishes a separate specification document for Form 1099-NEC and Form 1099-MISC each season, and they are unusually clear about the one thing a firm needs to decide first: whether the form is wanted at all.

The test is withholding (Ohio individual income tax or Ohio school district income tax), not residency and not Ohio-source income.

The short version

Is a state filing required?

Only where Ohio individual income tax or school district income tax was withheld. The Department states that the information is not required to be submitted where nothing was withheld.

Does CF/SF satisfy the state?

Unresolved on Ohio's own pages. Ohio is a CF/SF participant in the IRS's table, but no Department page we could find addresses whether the program satisfies the state requirement, and Ohio's own rule is an unconditional upload mandate. The IRS's position is that verifying this with the state is the issuer's job.

Due date

For tax year 2025, submitted in calendar year 2026, the Department gives February 2, 2026. That is January 31 rolled off a Saturday. The equivalent specification for tax year 2026 had not been published when this article was written.

Reconciliation form

Form IT 3, and you no longer file one separately: no paper IT 3 is required, because the Upload Income Statement feature creates the IT 3 from the information submitted.

Electronic-filing threshold

None: the mandate is universal. Ohio law requires all employers and retirement system payers to file returns and submit income statements electronically, under Ohio Revised Code 5747.07 and 5747.071 and Ohio Administrative Code 5703-7-19.

Channel

The Upload Income Statement feature on OH|TAX eServices.

File format

The Department follows the layout required by IRS Publication 1220. Files are .txt with a lowercase extension, up to 100 MB; PDF is not accepted and .zip files cannot be processed.

What Ohio expects you to keep

Even where nothing is filed, the records have to exist. The Department requires 1099-NEC information to be maintained for at least four years from the due date, and says it may request that information when conducting compliance programs.

That is a useful thing to tell a client who asks why you are collecting W-9s and keeping acknowledgement detail for payees whose forms Ohio never asked for. The answer is that "not required to be submitted" and "not required to exist" are different sentences.

Why Ohio appears here at all

We wrote these nine guides because they are the states our customers' clients actually live and work in. Where a state's rule is unresolved on the state's own published pages, this article says so rather than picking an answer.