Real estate · 🇺🇸 United States
Twelve 1099 agents, no contemporaneous records
A brokerage paying agents on commission split had no reliable basis for its 1099 filings.
US real estate brokerage, 12 agents on 1099. Client identity withheld — we publish names only with written permission, so this engagement is described by its shape rather than by who it was.
12
Agent accounts rebuilt
31 Jan
Deadline met
Per-agent
Split reporting introduced
The situation
- Agents were paid a commission split that varied by tier and by transaction, calculated manually each time.
- 1099 preparation each January was a reconstruction exercise from bank payments.
What we found
- Splits calculated inconsistently, with several agents historically underpaid.
- Broker-paid expenses on behalf of agents not tracked, so 1099 amounts were arguably wrong in both directions.
- No signed record of the split tier applying to each agent.
What we did
- Built a commission ledger per agent with the split tier recorded against each transaction.
- Tracked broker-paid expenses against agents so 1099 reporting reflects reality.
- Reconciled and corrected the historic underpayments.
The outcome
- 1099s were filed by 31 January from a maintained ledger rather than reconstructed from bank data.
- Agents can see their own split position during the year rather than arguing about it after.
Related
Where this applies
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