Do you have ordinary and necessary expenses for the escort dancer job?
Side gigs normally are treated as a sole proprietorship, which is reported on Schedule C. TurboTax Deluxe, Premier, and Self-employed all can create a Schedule C; however, their ability to handle expenses is very limited (perhaps non-existent) in Deluxe, limited in Premier, and is fully available in Self-employed.
So the more you have legitimate expenses for your side gig, the higher the version of product you want to use.
You were paid in cash; that's OK because in the "Business" section of TurboTax, you can enter "General Income" (for sure for Self-employed which is what I use) without a form like a 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC. You just enter the sum of whatever you received with the appropriate description (there is no set description, so enter something that you will remember if the IRS ever writes you about this).
The purposes of Schedule C and its partner Schedule SE are two-fold:
- To allow you deduct expenses against business income (and reducing taxable income) and
- To calculate and collect Self-employment taxes, which is how your future Social Security and Medicare are funded.
Note that each of the versions of TurboTax described above can handle other forms like W-2s, dependents, and the like.
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