Is income you earn from Market Research companies (doing online surveys, trying products in-home) counted as earned income for the Earned Income Tax Credit?

[sorcerygenius]

I earned about $800 this year doing online surveys and in-home testing for market research and was wondering if these count toward the Earned Income Tax Credit. The income is taxable.

[rjs]

Yes. It is self-employment income. You have to report it as business income. You must also report as business expenses all your expenses related to the income. Your net self-employment income (what you earned minus expenses) will be included in your earned income for the Earned Income Credit.

[sorcerygenius]

If I already filed it reporting it as other wages NOT on a W-2, would that mean I need to amend my return?

[rjs]

Yes.

I should have asked you whether any of the market research companies that you did work for will send you either a W-2 or a 1099-MISC. They have until February 1 to put those in the mail. Before you do anything further you should wait to see if you get any W-2 or 1099-MISC forms. I don't think the TurboTax software for amended returns is ready yet, anyway.

[sorcerygenius]

I would be sent a 1099-MISC if I earned more than $600. But I earned less than $300 on each site, so they didn't issue them. I have the total amounts, but I didn't realize it was self-employment? I'm being paid by a company. I do have a business of my own (eBay business) but I didn't realize that someone paying me for taking a survey would count as self-employment...

I already filed my taxes... does this mean I committed fraud? I honestly thought that in Turbotax where they asked for "other income not reported on a W-2 or 1099-MISC" that that was the right place to put it. I'm really scared, I don't want to go to jail.

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2723989-where-do-i-report-income-in-turbotax-for-taking-online-sur...> This person also gave a different answer saying that what I did was right, this is the answer I found when I was filing my taxes.

[rjs]

Relax. It's not fraud unless you were intentionally cheating. The IRS is not going to come after you.

Someone paying you to take ONE survey would not be self-employment. But when you do it repeatedly it becomes a side business. If you had gotten a 1099-MISC, the IRS would definitely consider it self-employment. The fact that you did not earn $600 from any one company doesn't change the character of activity. I disagree with TurboTaxEliot's answer because the person he was responding to was doing it regularly every month. That's a business activity, not an isolated survey.

I think you should amend your return to report it as self-employment income. That means you will have to pay self-employment tax on it. By reporting it as other income you already paid the income tax on it. To go back to your original question, other income is not counted as earned income for the Earned Income Credit, but self-employment income IS counted as earned income for the EIC.

And don't worry about going to jail. That's not going to happen.

[Coronastimuluscheck]

I for many years had done many surveys making over thousands just staying up all night doing surveys for hours of my time