There are two $600 rules in college sports. Only one of them just changed.

A $1,500 NIL deal signed in 2026 has to be disclosed to your compliance office within five business days, will not generate a 1099, and is fully taxable. All three of those are true at the same time.

If that combination sounds like it shouldn't be possible, that's the point of this post.

Last updated: August 21, 2026.

Athletes hear "$600" constantly and reasonably assume it's one threshold. It's two, they come from different places, and they were only ever the same number by coincidence.

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the reporting threshold for Forms 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC rose from $600 to $2,000, effective tax year 2026. It gets adjusted for inflation starting in 2027.

Tax year 2026 is the first year it bites. Which means this January is the first January where a deal that produced paperwork last year produces none.

Sources: IRS, Name, image and likeness income, updated August 14, 2026; Avalara.

This is the part worth being blunt about, because the misunderstanding here has a dollar value attached.

The threshold governs when a business has to send a form. It has nothing to do with when you owe tax.

The IRS says it in one sentence: "You must report all NIL income that you receive even if the payer does not issue you a Form 1099 or Form W-2." And the $400 self-employment filing floor didn't move either.

So deals between $600 and $2,000 are in a new position this year. Same obligation. Less paper.

Because of how athletes actually keep records.

A 1099 arriving in January is a reminder. It's a piece of mail that says this happened, this is how much, don't forget it. For a lot of people it's the entire filing system — the shoebox method, and it works well enough when the shoebox fills up on its own.

In 2026 the shoebox stops filling up on its own for every deal under $2,000.

The deals don't get smaller. The reminders do. And the athletes most affected are the ones doing volume in mid-size local deals — a car dealership, a restaurant, a regional brand — rather than the seven-figure headlines.

The disclosure side didn't loosen. Third-party deals at $600 or more — including amounts that aggregate to $600 with the same party — still go to compliance and the NIL Go portal within five business days of execution.

One thing did move. As of July 2026, the College Sports Commission exempted deals between $600 and $15,000 from compensation-range review until an athlete accumulates $50,000 in associated agreements in an academic year. That's a real reduction in scrutiny — but it's a change to the valuation review, not to whether you have to disclose. You still file it. It just gets looked at less hard.

Source: Business of College Sports, CSC July 2026 report.

1. 1You sign it.
2. 2Within five business days, it goes to compliance and NIL Go. Required.
3. 3In January, no 1099 arrives. Correct — the payer isn't required to send one.
4. 4You owe tax on all of it, including self-employment tax if you're a contractor.
5. 5If nobody wrote it down at step 1, step 4 happens without you.

Step 5 is the whole post.

Log it when you sign it.

You're already doing something at step 2 — the five-day clock forces a record to exist somewhere in the athletic department. The gap is that the compliance record serves the school, and there's no equivalent record that serves you.

That's what Veloro is. You log the deal in under two minutes, it gets categorized, and it goes into a running estimate of where you stand across every source — rev share, third-party, collective, all of it in one place. CPA-approved calculations. The app says "Tax Suggested," not "Tax Owed," because your actual liability could be higher or lower and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

It doesn't file for you and it doesn't replace your accountant. It means that when you get to them, the year exists in writing.

Thresholds move. This one moved once already and is indexed to inflation from 2027, so the $2,000 will drift. State treatment of NIL income is also in flux — Arkansas has enacted an exemption, several other states have tried and failed, and some of it is being litigated.

Check the current rule before you rely on any number in this post, including ours. That's what the last-updated date at the top is for.

Last updated: August 21, 2026.