What is hobby income? Can it be trains my husband buy?

carver66 — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 22:37:00 GMT

It depends. The train sets he buys themselves are not in...

DanielV01 — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 22:37:03 GMT

It depends. The train sets he buys themselves are not income in and of themselves, but they could contribute to hobby income. Take the following example:

Your husband loves building model railroads, and decides to got to a trade show where they have all kinds of train sets and a contest at the end of the show. He decides to enter the contest because of his train set and he wins an award. This is a classic example of hobby income. He is not collecting train sets to make money, but his collection did make money. This type of income is taxed as ordinary income (as compared to self-employment), and therefore, he will not pay self-employment tax on this income. However, he is also limited on how many expenses he may claim as well. For hobby income expenses, you only may claim up to the amount of hobby income (no loss allowed), you must be able to itemize deductions to see any benefit of the expenses, and the expenses will only count as a deduction after these and similar deductions are greater than 2% of your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). Here is an IRS website with more information on hobby income: https://www.irs.gov/help-resources/tools-faqs/faqs-for-individuals/frequently-asked-tax-questions-an...

The following FAQ will assist you to enter this into TurboTax if you need to: https://ttlc.intuit.com/replies/3301111

topic What is hobby income? Can it be trains my husband buy? in Get your taxes done using TurboTax

What is hobby income? Can it be trains my husband buy?

It depends. The train sets he buys themselves are not in...