If you hold the agents' licenses, you are also their payer of record, and the IRS expects paperwork to match the money. For almost every brokerage that means a January ritual: 1099-NECs out to the roster.
The $600 rule for 1099-NEC to your agents
Any agent you paid $600 or more during the calendar year gets a Form 1099-NEC showing their nonemployee compensation: their side of commission splits, bonuses, and referral payouts. Real estate agents are typically statutory nonemployees under the tax code when they work under a written contract and are paid on production rather than hours, which is exactly why they get 1099s instead of W-2s even though you supervise their license.
The form covers what the brokerage actually paid the agent. It does not include amounts the agent never received, and it is separate from anything the title company or a cooperating brokerage reported to you.
Reporting the net split, not your gross commission
The most common brokerage 1099 mistake is reporting the wrong number. If a deal closed at $30,000 gross commission and the agent received $24,000 after the split, the 1099-NEC shows $24,000. Report the gross and your agent gets taxed on money they never touched; they will notice, and you will be amending forms in March. Deductions the agent owes you, like desk fees or E&O chargebacks, deserve care too: if you collected them by withholding from commission checks, decide consistently whether you are reporting the pre-deduction or post-deduction figure, and keep your books able to prove it either way.
Also mind the direction of paper flowing to you. Referral fees you pay to another brokerage of $600 or more get a 1099-NEC as well, and payments to your unlicensed staff on payroll are W-2 wages, never 1099s.
January 31: the deadline that catches brokerages
Form 1099-NEC is due to both the recipient and the IRS by January 31, one of the earliest information-return deadlines on the calendar. Penalties are charged per form and increase the later you file, so a fifty-agent roster filed late gets expensive quickly. The prep work is all data hygiene: a current Form W-9 on file for every agent before their first payout (legal name, entity type, TIN), payout totals by agent for the year, and addresses that survived their last move.
Collect the W-9 at onboarding, not in January. An agent who has already cashed out and moved brokerages has little incentive to answer your TIN request, and filing without a TIN triggers backup withholding obligations you do not want to manage retroactively.