Thanks, this starts to make more sense now. Since this is all completely separate from my tax return and is my dependent son's college project, we are trying to determine if he needs to file a return.
The Kickstarter project was a senior year college film production needed for graduation. In order to rent a truck, some equipment, get student and occasional semi-professional actors, etc, he had to raise $3000 in pledges, which he did. The people who pledged get something tangible in return like a copy of the graphics used or a copy of the video or film backer credit it the titles, etc. So it's definitely not a gift.
It's also not a job, and there are no wages or W2. Total in was $3068 minus the Kickstarter fee, so the net was $2819, and that was the only "income" he had for 2019.
We filled out a return for him on TurboTax, using the steps you outlined below with $2819 as Miscellaneous Income. We did not enter any expenses (though he spent $3396 over the course of the project so took a loss.)
TurboTax has a big green "$0" for Federal Refund, I suppose because the standard deduction was greater than that. So it looks like he owes nothing. Would he still need to file?
Mike
