QuickBooks and Colorado Form DR 1106: Filing the Annual 1099 Transmittal
QuickBooks prefills most of Colorado's DR 1106 transmittal form, but certain fields and amended-return rules require manual attention before filing.
QuickBooks Desktop includes built-in support for Colorado Form DR 1106, the Annual Transmittal of State 1099 Forms, but users preparing year-end filings regularly encounter questions about which fields the software fills automatically, when manual entry is required, and how the state’s amended-return rules interact with what QuickBooks can and cannot do.
What the DR 1106 Covers
The DR 1106 is the cover sheet Colorado requires when a business has withheld state income tax on 1099 statements during the prior calendar year. For active accounts, the form is due on the last day of February following the year in which withholding occurred. For inactive accounts — businesses that have closed — it is due within thirty days of closure. When either deadline lands on a weekend or holiday, the due date shifts to the next business day.
One point that catches users off guard: if you file electronically, you only need to submit the DR 1106 separately if an amount appears on lines 3A or 3B of the form.
What QuickBooks Prefills
When you open the DR 1106 inside QuickBooks, the software populates most fields automatically using your existing company, payroll, and vendor data. In the typical scenario — where all relevant records were entered into QuickBooks throughout the year — you may not need to manually complete any fields at all.
That said, the software flags fields it could not prefill, and users should review those before filing. QuickBooks provides in-product hyperlinks on the form itself that trace withholding figures back to their source data, which helps verify that the numbers are correct.
Fields That May Need Manual Entry
Several fields on the DR 1106 commonly require attention beyond what QuickBooks auto-populates:
Social security numbers. If the federal employer identification number is not available, you must enter the social security numbers of the company’s officers instead.
Number of 1099s. Enter the count of 1099 statements being reported with this transmittal.
Tax withheld on 1099s (Line 1). This represents the total Colorado tax withheld as reported on 1099 forms. If you withheld and reported income tax on 1099 statements outside of QuickBooks, you need to manually enter the combined withholding amount on Line 1.
Income taxes remitted (Line 2). Enter the total payments made for withholding on Forms 1099.
Penalty. Late filings carry a penalty of 5% of tax due or $5.00, whichever is greater, with an additional half-percent accruing for continued delinquency beyond the initial late calculation.
The Amended Return Limitation
This is where QuickBooks users hit a wall. The DR 1106 form window includes a checkbox for filing an amended return, but QuickBooks does not support the preparation of amended returns for this form.
Colorado’s instructions require a separate amended return for each period, and that amended return must show all tax columns as corrected — not just the differences. The amended filing replaces the original in its entirety. Because QuickBooks cannot generate this corrected version, users who need to amend must handle that process outside the software.
Payment and Mailing
Payments should be made by check payable to the Colorado Department of Revenue. The form, 1099 statements, and payment should be mailed to:
Colorado Department of Revenue Denver, CO 80261-009
Saving and Exporting Form Data
QuickBooks offers options to save a copy of the completed payroll form as a PDF, which is useful for recordkeeping. The software also supports exporting payroll data to Microsoft Excel for users who need to summarize or reformat their figures outside of QuickBooks — helpful when reconciling withholding totals or preparing supplementary documentation.
The Bottom Line
The DR 1106 is one of the more straightforward state transmittal forms QuickBooks handles, provided your vendor and withholding data is complete and current inside the software. The main friction points are the amended-return workflow, which QuickBooks explicitly does not support, and the manual fields that depend on information QuickBooks has no way of knowing — such as 1099 withholding tracked outside the program. Reviewing every field the software flags as incomplete before filing is the simplest way to avoid a correction down the road.