Updated October 16, 2026. Quick answer: Box 10 of Form 1099-G (Rev. December 2026) shows the amount paid to you from a governmental paid family leave program. It is new in the December 2026 revision; the March 2024 revision has no box 10. The recipient copy says that if you made contributions to a governmental paid family leave program and received total payments that meet or exceed the applicable reporting threshold, the payer must issue the form, and it mentions Schedule A for contributions.
Schedule 1 (Form 1040) for 2025, read line by line: Schedule 1 line 1 and Schedule 1 line 7.
What box 10 reports
The recipient copy of the form describes the box in one sentence: “Shows the amount paid to you from a governmental paid family leave program.” On the form the line is labelled “Family leave benefits”.
The recipient copy ties the payer’s duty to contributions and a reporting threshold. “If you made contributions to a governmental paid family leave program and received total payments that meets or exceeds the applicable reporting threshold from that program, the payer must issue a Form 1099-G to report the amount paid to you.” For the threshold itself, the instructions point elsewhere: “See Pub. 1099 for information on the applicable reporting threshold.”
The other boxes on the same form, and the Form 1099-K boxes, are collected in the 1099-G and 1099-K boxes guide.
Why the box was added
The December 2026 instructions list it under What’s New. “Rev. Rul. 2025-4 requires states to file with the IRS and furnish to an employee a Form 1099 to report family leave benefits paid by state paid family and medical leave programs.” “Box 10, Family leave benefits, was added to Form 1099-G to facilitate this reporting requirement.” The instructions cite the ruling as “Rev. Rul. 2025-4, 2025-7 I.R.B. 758”. This page goes no further than that wording on the ruling. For the recipient, the practical effect is that a paid family leave program run by a state can now send a Form 1099-G in the same way a state unemployment agency or a state tax agency does, with its own line on the form instead of an entry among the other boxes.
What the payer is told to enter
The payer instructions describe what goes in the box. “If you make payments of family leave benefits under a governmental paid family and medical leave program, enter the total amount before any income tax was withheld if the total amount paid meets or exceeds the applicable reporting threshold.” “If you withheld federal income tax at the request of the recipient, enter it in box 4.” Box 10 is therefore a gross figure, and any federal tax you asked the state to hold back appears in box 4, which is covered with boxes 4 to 9 in the 1099-G and 1099-K boxes guide.
Contributions and Schedule A
The recipient copy mentions one return line in connection with this box. “If you itemize deductions, you may report your contributions on Schedule A (Form 1040) as state or local taxes paid.” Schedule A is walked through on the Schedule A page, and the limit on state and local taxes there is covered on the 2026 SALT cap page.
The box 10 paragraph quoted above addresses reporting contributions on Schedule A. This page does not go beyond it on whether or how the benefit amount itself is taxed. Your state agency’s notice and the Form 1040 instructions are the places to check, and the state-by-state differences in these programs are laid out on the paid family leave by state page.
The renumbered state boxes
Adding box 10 moved the state boxes. Of those boxes the instructions say “They are provided for your convenience only and need not be completed for the IRS.” “state information boxes 10a, 10b, and 11 on Form 1099-G have been renumbered as 11a, 11b, and 12, respectively.” If you compare an older form with a new one, the state tax withheld amount that was in box 11 is in box 12 on the December 2026 form. The same renumbering applies to the state identification number and the state abbreviation, which moved from boxes 10b and 10a to boxes 11b and 11a, so a worksheet or software import keyed to the old numbers will pick up the wrong box.
Edition and box numbers
The primary read for this page is the December 2026 revision of Form 1099-G (recipient copy, Copy B) and the December 2026 Instructions for Form 1099-G. The instructions describe their own use this way: “Use the December 2026 revision of Form 1099-G and these instructions to file 2026 information with the IRS in early 2027.” irs.gov was serving that revision on 2026-10-16. The March 2024 revision of the instructions is the previous one and was used for comparison. Box 10 does not exist in the March 2024 revision. Its payer instructions end with “Boxes 10a Through 11. State Information”, so the state boxes were 10a, 10b and 11 there. A form on the March 2024 revision has no box 10. That revision’s box 1 instructions list governmental paid family leave program payments among the unemployment compensation payments to report in box 1, on a separate Form 1099-G for each contributory program. Check the revision printed on the form you received, because the box numbers after box 9 differ between the two revisions.
Common mistakes
- Looking for box 10 on an older form. The December 2026 instructions say “Box 10, Family leave benefits, was added to Form 1099-G”, so the March 2024 form has none.
- Assuming no form means no program payments. The recipient copy says a form is issued when payments “meets or exceeds the applicable reporting threshold”, and the threshold is in Pub. 1099.
- Mixing up the state withholding box. The instructions say the old boxes “have been renumbered as 11a, 11b, and 12, respectively”.
Related: paid family leave by state, Schedule A (Form 1040), the 2026 SALT cap, and the 2027 SALT cap.
Sources
- Form 1099-G, Certain Government Payments (Rev. December 2026), recipient copy: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1099g.pdf
- Instructions for Form 1099-G (Rev. December 2026): https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1099g.pdf
- Instructions for Form 1099-G (Rev. March 2024): IRS archived PDF (irs.gov)
Read from the IRS documents linked above on October 16, 2026. General information, not tax advice. Your own facts decide the outcome, and a preparer, the account provider or the IRS is the right place to confirm anything consequential.