If as a twitch streamer i received a 1099 misc will all my reported income be listed with the royalties or do donations and bits have to be listed separately?

[laceybeth1994]

i only have income listed in royalties and the taxes for twitch have been very confusing. Do i have to lists donos/bit a different way/not at all, or is it already included with royalties?

[ColeenD3]

Please see this answer from @Opus 17. You will need to ask the issuer what is or is not included as income on your 1099.

1. "Donations" are only deductible if they are made to a registered exempt organization.  Otherwise you are making personal gifts.

2. "Networking expenses."  You can generally deduct business expenses that are ordinary and necessary to the business.  Gifts that are intended to promote your business can sometimes be deductible business expenses.  However, you must first be in business—that is, you are engaged in an "ongoing trade or business", reported on schedule C, for which you pay income tax and self-employment tax.  Not a hobby, an ongoing trade or business, that you do for the purpose of earning a profit.  Then, you can give gifts of up to $25 per person per year, and deduct them as schedule C business expenses.  Gifts are generally given to customers, potential customers, etc. for the purpose of building your business.

If you are reporting your streaming income on schedule C and paying income tax and SE tax, then potentially you can deduct gift expenses that serve to promote your channel as the source of your income.  I'm not a lawyer, but that would be the logic of deducting your bits as business expenses.  

See chapter 3 here https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p463.pdf

If you don't report a taxable profit from streaming on schedule C, you have nothing to deduct an expense from.  Life expenses aren't deductible simply because they happen, you can generally only deduct expenses that occur as part of generating taxable income.

[Opus 17]

Anything paid to you in return for a service that you provide is taxable self-employment income.  Even though Twitch calls these payments "donations", you are paying a service (providing entertainment) and so the money is considered your taxable income.  

All your self-employment income is taxable regardless of whether or not it reported on some kind of 1099-R. 

Royalties (payment for re-using past content?) is taxable income just as payments for current content.  I believe Turbotax Self Employed version will give you separate places to list current income and royalties but they are both taxable.

Bits are taxable income at their US$ conversion amount as of the day you "constructively receive" the payment.  I don't know what you have to go through to cash in a bit.  If you can only cash them it at certain times, then the income would be reported on the first day after receipt that you could have converted them to cash, even if you didn't convert them on that day.  If bits are immediately convertible to cash, they are counted as income received on the day you received them (at their conversion value) even if you don't convert them right away.