You will only receive a 1099 for jury duty if the court paid you $600 or more during the calendar year. Below that threshold, no form is issued, but the pay is still taxable and still has to go on your return.
When the Court Has to Issue a Form
Federal and state courts follow the same information-return rules as businesses. When a court pays a juror $600 or more in a single calendar year, it must file a Form 1099-MISC with the IRS and send a copy to the juror by the end of January the following year. The payment is reported in Box 3, which covers miscellaneous income outside of employment wages.
The $600 figure is a yearly total, not a per-trial or per-day figure. If you sat on two separate juries at the same court system and the combined fees reached $600, the court is required to issue the form. Government agencies are explicitly covered by the 1099-MISC rules, so federal district courts and state or county courts are all on the hook once the threshold is crossed.
Why Most Jurors Never See One
Federal courts pay $50 per day of attendance. For petit jurors who serve more than ten days on a single case, the trial judge can authorize up to an additional $10 per day beyond those first ten days, raising the maximum to $60 per day. At $50 a day, you’d need to serve at least twelve days in one year before the court is required to send a form. That happens on longer trials, but it isn’t the norm.
State and county court rates run lower, in some places as little as $5 or $10 per day, with a handful of states paying nothing for the first day or two. At those rates, almost no state-court juror ever crosses the $600 line.
Reporting Jury Pay on Your Return
Jury duty pay goes on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), Part I, line 8h. That line is specifically labeled “Jury duty pay” and feeds into the “Other income” total on line 10, which then carries over to your Form 1040.
If a 1099-MISC arrived, the amount in Box 3 should match what you enter on line 8h. If no form arrived, report the total you were paid based on your own records: check stubs, deposit amounts, or whatever documentation the court provided. The IRS expects you to track it either way.
Jury checks come without any federal income tax withheld. The court pays the full gross amount and the tax falls to you at filing time. The pay is not subject to Social Security or Medicare taxes and is not self-employment income, so you only owe regular income tax at your marginal rate.
If Your Employer Keeps the Jury Fees
Some employers keep paying your full salary during jury service on the condition that you hand over the fees the court paid you. When that happens, you still report the full jury pay as income on line 8h, and you claim an offsetting deduction on Schedule 1, Part II, line 24a.
The line 24a deduction is an adjustment to income, so it reduces your adjusted gross income directly without any need to itemize. It effectively zeroes out the jury pay so you aren’t taxed on money you didn’t keep. Report both the income and the deduction separately. Skipping the income line and only showing your regular salary leaves your return out of sync with what the court reported to the IRS, and that mismatch can trigger a notice.
Hold on to a record of the amount you turned over, along with any written employer policy requiring the handover. A pay stub notation or a receipt from your employer is enough.
Reimbursements and Expenses
Courts often reimburse jurors separately for parking, public transportation, and sometimes meals. Those reimbursements are generally not taxable and are typically excluded from the amount reported on a 1099-MISC. They repay costs you incurred rather than adding to your income.
If the court doesn’t reimburse something like courthouse parking, you cannot deduct it. The miscellaneous itemized deduction that once covered unreimbursed juror expenses was eliminated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and remains unavailable through at least 2025. There is no above-the-line deduction for jury service travel costs either. The only adjustment to income the IRS recognizes for jury duty is the amount you remit to your employer on line 24a.
What Happens If You Don’t Report It
When a court issues a 1099-MISC, the IRS receives a copy. If the amount doesn’t appear on your return, the IRS matching system will flag the gap and send a notice, typically a CP2000, proposing additional tax. You’ll owe the tax plus interest running from the original due date.
For most jurors the dollar amounts are small, so the practical result is a minor tax adjustment and interest. But the IRS treats failure to report income shown on an information return as potential negligence, which can carry an accuracy-related penalty of 20% of the underpayment.
If your pay fell below $600 and no 1099 was issued, the income is still legally reportable. The agency is unlikely to catch a missing $50 payment on its own, but the obligation exists. Adding it to line 8h when you file settles the question.