About that misc. income

[GaryNGraziano]

My wife earned a modest amount of money doing a bit of freelance clerical work for a friend involved in a lawsuit.  She is not self-employed:  she is semi-retired, and also is a part-time employee of a not-for-profit corporation.  I'm doing our 2024 taxes, and when I enter her misc. income the program wants me to create a schedule C.   She doesn't have "a business" or expenses related to one.  Is there a way to report this income without doing a sched. C?

[ThomasM125]

If the work she did was a one-time thing not to recur in future years and was not related to her normal profession, you may be able to have the income reported as Other Income as opposed to Self-employment income. To do so, when you enter the Form 1099-Misc, you need to indicate that the income did not involve work like her main job, that she just received the money in 2024, and that the activity was not engaged in to earn money. If she can't answer those questions in that way, then the IRS will likely assume she is self-employed and TurboTax will prepare the Schedule C accordingly.