Is there a "benefit" to counting something as Hobby or misc/other income vs business income? Or are these simply different categories to list different sources of income?
From what I understand, any income that you make needs to be reported to the IRS and you need to pay taxes on it regardless.
I am self-employed and work remotely, but this year I was invited to take part in the Amazon Vine program. As you may already know, Amazon Vine is a program where you are given a list of items that you can request for. The requested item is sent to you and you then review the item. In 6 months, the item becomes yours. However, while they are "free" items, you still need to pay the taxes of those items. They calculate the value of the items based off of the "fair market value", which I don't totally understand, but I get that this is how the amount is estimated.
From the Amazon Vine Help page, "You will receive your 1099 form by January 31st only if: you received over $600 in payments OR if there were any taxes deducted / withheld from you." But I understand that even if I received less than $600 worth of items, I still need to report that "income" to the IRS.
I don't do any deducting for business expenses ever, so for my situation I don't think there's any "benefits" in claiming it as hobby or misc/other income vs business income.
From reading other threads on this, many people want to claim their amounts from the Amazon 1099-Misc as "hobby" income. But as of 2018, you can't deduct hobby expenses. I don't know what you would even deduct as a hobby expense for the Amazon vine program since you receive items and not money. I joined the Amazon vine program for fun and to see how it worked. This is definitely not a business for me, and would probably be a hobby based off of the information from this link:
https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/small-business-taxes/when-the-irs-classifies-your-business-as-a...
To sum up, I could use more information about the differences between the types of incomes and why it matters to distinguish between them. Also if there are "benefits" to claiming income as one vs the other in situations where you can choose. If I claim my Amazon vine "income" as a hobby, I've also read that the IRS will send you an audit to verify that it's a hobby, which sounds scary and makes me want to just claim the income as a business even if I don't consider it to be one just so I don't have to worry about dealing with that (especially if I don't see any benefits to claiming it as a hobby or misc/other income).
Thanks in advance!
