I also saw the original question. 🙂

Just shooting from the hip, you can't be expected to rewrite history.  If a grant was returned by 12/31/20 then it should not be reported on a 1099 for 2020.  You had the month of January to get that accounting done.  For folks in that situation you likely need to amend.  But granted in 2020 and returned in 2021 is probably taxable to the recipient in 2020 and a claim of right repayment in 2021.

See "Repayments" starting on page 34 of Pub 525 (2020):

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p525.pdf

If the amount was less than $3,000 then there may be no tax benefit to the repayment in the subsequent year.  I'm having trouble feeling sorry for the "tried to cheat my local government, got caught, and had to pay more tax" people though.

Rick