If you earn on OnlyFans through a US payment processor, you may have spent the last couple of years bracing for a $600 reporting threshold that never actually arrived. It’s now confirmed: that drop isn’t happening in 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed in 2025, retroactively restored the older, higher threshold — and it’s what applies this year. Here’s what actually changed, and why “I won’t get a form” doesn’t mean “I don’t owe tax.”
The actual threshold for 2026
Third-party payment platforms — think PayPal, Cash App, Venmo, and the processors behind sites like OnlyFans — are only required to issue you a Form 1099-K if you cross both $20,000 in gross payments and 200 separate transactions in a calendar year. Both conditions have to be met; crossing one without the other doesn’t trigger the form on its own. This reverses the American Rescue Plan Act’s planned phase-down toward a $600 threshold, which had been scheduled to take effect and would have meant a form for almost every creator earning anything at all.
Why this matters even if you don’t hit it
A lot of creators read “threshold raised” as “less paperwork, less tax owed” — that’s the wrong takeaway. The 1099-K is an information return; it tells the IRS what a payment processor moved through your account. Not receiving one changes nothing about whether that income is taxable. Every dollar earned on OnlyFans is still reportable income under US tax law, form or no form, and a platform can still choose to issue a 1099-K voluntarily even if you’re under the threshold. Some states also set their own, lower reporting thresholds independently of the federal rule, so a form can still arrive because of where you live even if the federal numbers don’t apply to you.
What OnlyFans and similar platforms actually report
OnlyFans already reports creator earnings information as part of standard platform compliance — separate from, and in addition to, whatever a payment processor does under the 1099-K rules. That’s the same underlying idea behind the UK’s platform reporting rules to HMRC that we covered here: tax authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly getting income data directly from the platforms creators use, rather than relying solely on people to self-report.
What to actually do about it
- Keep your own running total of gross earnings through every processor and platform, regardless of whether you expect to hit $20,000 or 200 transactions.
- Set aside money for tax as you earn rather than waiting for a form to tell you what you owe — a missing 1099-K is not permission to skip a return.
- If you’re a US creator earning close to the threshold, talk to a tax professional about quarterly estimated payments before the number creeps past it.
- If you also earn through UK platforms or live in the UK, remember the two systems run independently — H&R Block’s new creator tax tool is built around the US side of this, not the UK self-assessment process.
This article summarises publicly available tax policy information and is not tax or financial advice. Thresholds, forms, and enforcement can change, and your specific situation may be affected by state rules or your business structure; consult a qualified tax professional about your own filing obligations.
The stakes for getting this wrong aren’t hypothetical — one OnlyFans creator was sentenced to a year in prison for hiding $5.4 million in income from the IRS, and a separate creator was jailed for filing a false tax return covering similar earnings. Neither case turned on whether a 1099-K arrived — the income was taxable either way.
