Lots of nervous Nellies on that thread, worried that being off by a penny will cause an audit.
Yes, the IRS matches 1099s to what you report on your return. No, they do not match to the penny. The don’t really even match to the dollar. That’s because they ask you to round like you were taught in grade school - 49 cents or less rounds down and 50 cents or more rounds up. But they don’t round. They truncate. They simply drop the pennies. So you are almost certain to report a dollar or two more they they check.
Even a significant mismatch won’t generate an audit. It generates an automated letter telling you what they have and attempting to match that up to what you reported. Then it calculates the amount you owe if they are right. If you report more then they have on file, they don’t say anything.
So it’s perfectly safe to add a dollar to one of the “duplicate” 1099s to avoid the duplication problem. And if you want to keep the totals exactly right, take a buck off the other 1099. That still won’t generate any correspondence from the IRS.
–Peter