On April 14, 2011, President Obama signed H.R. 4, repealing the 1099 reporting provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law was scheduled to take effect in January 2012.

Those rules would have forced businesses to report to the IRS every purchase of $600 or more from every vendor of goods and services, beginning with purchases made in 2012.

The goal of the original bill was to decrease underreported income to help pay for additional costs of the health care reform bill. The repeal was advocated by many business groups in order to remove the additional tax compliance burden on small businesses.

These is still a requirement to issue a 1099 to an outside contractor, in order to enable the government to keep track of the income of outside contractors. The additional burden resulted from having to report every purchase, even from large corporations. Since any major corporation you're making purchases from already has a reporting requirement and more controls that enhance income reporting the law was felt to be an unnecessary duplication of efforts.