What a 1099 contractor pay stub is
A client who pays you as an independent contractor does not run payroll for you, so nobody issues you a pay stub. A stub you make here is your own record of what a client paid you and when: the client, the period, the amount, and a running year-to-date total. It is useful for your books, for budgeting, and as a tidy summary to keep beside your invoices and bank deposits. It is not issued by your client, it is not a payroll record, and it does not verify your income to anyone. When someone needs proof, they ask for the documents described further down this page.
Why a contractor pay stub shows no tax
The IRS puts it plainly on Form 1099-NEC: you get that form because the payer did not treat you as an employee and did not withhold income tax, Social Security or Medicare. So an honest stub for contractor income shows the same figure for gross and net pay. The one exception is backup withholding. If you never gave a client your taxpayer identification number on Form W-9, they may have to withhold 24% of your pay, and that amount belongs on your stub as federal income tax withheld.
The tax you pay yourself instead
Because nobody withholds it, you pay self-employment tax directly: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, worked out on 92.35% of your net profit. For 2026 the Social Security part applies to the first $184,500 of your combined wages and self-employment earnings; the Medicare part has no cap. Income tax comes on top. A contractor pay stub does not deduct any of this, because none of it was taken out of your pay — use it to see what came in, and set aside what you will owe.
Estimated tax deadlines for 2026
Most contractors pay their tax during the year in four estimated payments with Form 1040-ES. For 2026 the due dates are April 15, 2026, June 15, 2026, September 15, 2026 and January 15, 2027. You can skip the January payment if you file your 2026 return by February 1, 2027 and pay the whole balance with it. Year-to-date totals on your own stubs make each quarter easier to work out.
When a landlord or lender asks for proof of income
Most will want documents that someone other than you produced: the 1099-NEC forms your clients sent you, your last one or two tax returns with Schedule C, bank statements showing the deposits, or an IRS wage and income transcript, which you can get free from IRS.gov. Ask which they accept before you apply. A pay stub you made yourself can sit alongside those as a summary, but present it as what it is — your own record — and never as something a client issued.
Your clients' 1099-NEC forms
Each client that paid you $2,000 or more for services in 2026 must send you a Form 1099-NEC by February 1, 2027; for 2025 payments the threshold was $600. Those forms, not your pay stubs, are what the IRS matches against your return, so check that their totals agree with your own records. If you are the one paying contractors, you have to issue those forms yourself — this site has a separate 1099-NEC generator for payers.
How to make one
Start the generator from this page and it opens in contractor mode, with no tax withheld. Enter your client as the company and yourself as the person paid, then add what they paid you for the period — an hourly rate and hours, or a salary — and the pay date. The preview updates as you type and works out year-to-date totals from the dates. Previewing is free; you pay only to download a copy without the watermark, and editing or re-downloading that stub later costs nothing more.
