First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for your quick and very detailed reply! Fantastic.
Second of all, I was a little afraid of that, namely that the points count as income as soon as I receive
the points - doesn't matter when I redeem them.
Since, that's the case, it looks like I had $40 of paid survey income in 2019 and $80 in 2020 that I failed
to report on my taxes. However, I have decided to be safe and just report the FULL $200 in payouts I received in 2021 as income (even though most of that was from purchases which don't count as income, not surveys).
Summary:
2019:
$40 of survey income
I reported $0
2020:
$80 of survey income
I reported $0
2021:
$14 of survey income
I reported $200
Also, I reported it as business income, so I paid tax on it
So, my follow-up question is:
Since altogether I've made $134 from surveys and declared and paid tax on $200 (meaning I over-reported and over-paid, which is always allowed) - does it matter that I didn't report the exact right amounts every
year?
In other words, since the total paid survey income reported over the last three years is OVER what I made, does it matter that I missed reporting the right amounts in the right years?
In other words, it's all come out in the wash and I've definitely paid tax on this income...is filing amended returns for 2019 and 2020 really required?
I don't know how to do that, since TurboTax won't allow me to do the automated "Amend a Return", since
I used the Free File product in 2019 and 2020. I would have to MANUALLY amend my returns by hand, and I don't know how to do that. I'm homebound and make very little money...is paying a tax professional to amend all these returns over tax that I've now paid REALLY necessary (especially considering we're talking about very small amounts of income here)?
THANK YOU so much for you help, I really appreciate it!
