I used a rebate app called ibotta and received $842 for several personal items. I do not have a business. Do I enter this as income in TurboTax? Or not?

[WillK]

The short answer to this kind of question is no.  Rebates, in general, are not taxable income to an individual taxpayer, unless that person first took a tax deduction for the cost of the item(s), when they originally bought the product(s).

That would be true, for instance, where a taxpayer has a business activity, and the rebates relate instead to an expense (i.e., tax deduction) for a good or service used in the conduct of that business.

In that instance, yes indeed -- a rebate on a purchased item or service does have a tax impact.  However, if the item(s) are purely personal in nature, and with personal property specifically, the answer is no . . . for the reason that the underlying expense wasn't tax deductible in the first instance.

In other words, no deduction = no later need for a reversal (i.e., you don't need to report as taxable income) when a rebate is issued to you.  It can safely be ignored, as the rebate is not considered taxable.

[bannerfam2]

I don’t think this would be reportable. Ibotta is a grocery store cashback app. Essentially, you submit a receipt & Ibotta processes a manufacturer coupon for you. 90% of the rebates can’t be stacked with manufacturers coupons for that reason. Unless people are going to start keeping track of how much money they save on coupons, and reporting that too, it would be wrong to report Ibotta / or similar apps funds as well. Aside from that, if you had no other income you don’t have to report anything under (somewhere around) 4200. Obviously it’s far too late to change anybody’s decision here, but I just wanted to point out that’s it isn’t a literal cashback app. More like a coupon processing company.