Hello - I am a full time W2 employee in an unrelated field but take pictures more or less for fun. However, this year I will put out a small run of books with my photography for sale. I am planning on ordering 250 books that will cost $9250 to make and the revenue from that would be $12,500 netting $3250 in profit.
I ideally would like to treat and report the profit ($3250) received as hobby income in my normal tax filings but my understanding is that if it is hobby income then I would have to pay income taxes on the full revenue amount ($12,500) regardless of the fact that I had to pay $9K in costs to order the books. That would raise my income tax liability by $2K more than if it was only on the profits.
I am not intending to make this into an ongoing business and would like to avoid the hassles of filing a schedule C since I would only be having a business profit once every 3-5 years when I decided to make a new book. Any help would be appreciated!
