Generally, no. Payments to corporations are exempt from Form 1099 reporting, and that exemption covers S corporations. A business that pays an incorporated vendor for services does not have to file Form 1099-NEC for those payments, no matter how large they are. The rule comes from the regulations under IRC Section 6041, which carve corporations out of the definition of persons a payer must report on. This is one of the small, pleasant side effects of electing S status: once clients know they are paying a corporation, the January scramble of 1099s largely stops arriving. But the exemption has real exceptions, it depends on paperwork the vendor controls, and it says nothing about the S corporation's own duty to issue 1099s to the people it pays. Each of those pieces is worth getting right.
The corporation exemption
The reporting rules for Form 1099-NEC require a trade or business to report payments of $600 or more in a year to a nonemployee service provider (a threshold that legislation raised to $2,000 for payments made in 2026, indexed afterward). Treasury Regulation 1.6041-3(p) then exempts payments to corporations from that reporting. For this purpose a corporation includes a C corporation, an S corporation, and an LLC that has elected to be taxed as either one. The entity's tax classification is what counts, not its name: an LLC taxed as an S corporation is a corporation for 1099 purposes, while an LLC taxed as a partnership or sole proprietorship is not, and payments to it remain reportable.
The exemption is about the payer's filing obligation, nothing more. The income is just as taxable to the S corporation either way, and it must all be reported on Form 1120-S whether or not any client sent a form.
The exceptions: attorneys and medical payments
Two categories of payments stay reportable even when the payee is incorporated. Payments of $600 or more for legal services go on Form 1099-NEC regardless of whether the law firm is a corporation, and gross proceeds paid to an attorney, such as a settlement check, are reported separately on Form 1099-MISC. Payments for medical and health care services are likewise reportable on Form 1099-MISC even when made to a corporation. So an incorporated law practice or medical practice taxed as an S corporation will keep receiving 1099s, correctly. A handful of other narrow categories, such as substitute payments in lieu of dividends and certain fishing boat proceeds, follow the same pattern, but attorneys and medical providers are the exceptions most businesses actually meet. Payments made by credit card or through third-party payment platforms are a separate track entirely: the processor reports those on Form 1099-K, and the corporation exemption does not apply there.
The W-9 is how payers know
A payer only knows it is paying an S corporation because the vendor says so on Form W-9. The form asks for the vendor's legal name, taxpayer identification number, and federal tax classification, and it has a specific box for S corporation status. An LLC taxed as an S corporation checks the LLC box and writes S as its classification. A payer holding a W-9 that shows corporate status can rely on it and skip the 1099. Without a W-9 on file, the safe course for the payer is to issue the form anyway, and a vendor that refuses to provide one can be subject to backup withholding at 24%. If your S corporation wants clients to stop sending 1099s, the fix is administrative: return a correct, current W-9 to every client, especially in the first year after electing, since clients who knew you as a sole proprietor will keep filing 1099-NECs until their records change.
If you receive one anyway, and what you still owe others
Clients often issue 1099s to S corporations out of caution or stale records, and nothing bad happens. There is no penalty to either side for reporting a payment that did not have to be reported. Keep the form, make sure the income it shows is inside what the 1120-S reports, and move on. The bigger trap runs the other direction: the corporation exemption never excuses the S corporation from issuing its own forms. An S corporation that pays an unincorporated contractor, a freelance editor, a videographer, an assistant, above the reporting threshold must collect a W-9 and file Form 1099-NEC by January 31, with penalties per form for filing late or not at all. And a shareholder who works in the business is never a 1099 contractor of their own company; that compensation belongs on a W-2 as reasonable compensation, and paying yourself on a 1099-NEC instead is a classic S corporation payroll mistake the IRS looks for.