Hello: I have a travel business for additional income. Due to the pandemic, I received a lot of cancellations and gave refunds that included loss commission. Under Business Income/Income You Gave Back, can I enter the amount pertaining to loss commission? I ask this question because the amount may be larger than income on my 1099. Also, the expenses for my business is more than the income i received. Will this trigger an audit? Any advice will help. Thanks.
No. For cash basis taxpayers (which is almost everyone) income that you did not receive is just that -- income you did not receive. You can't take a deduction because you can't subtract something that was never part of your income to begin with. Your taxes are lower because you had less income. A refund would be money you paid back from money you had already received and reported as income.
For certain taxpayers who use accrual accounting, they book the revenue when a contract is signed, so accrual taxpayers would take a deduction for a cancelled contract. But remember, they are subtracting a payment that was never made from income they already reported (even though they hadn't been actually paid yet).
Expenses more than income is fairly normal, lots of businesses operate at a loss. Your loss may be deductible against other income or it may carry forward to offset future profits. If you make a loss in more than 3 out of 5 years, the IRS will look to see if you should reclassify your activities as a hobby. But one or two years of losses are unfortunately normal.
Not sure what loss commission is. If it is money you would have gotten but did not, you can’t deduct that. Many businesses do not have a profit from time to time. If you have good records you need not be concerned. If you have a loss more than 2 times in 5 years you will be considered as having a hobby and can’t deduct any expenses.
EDIT. 3 times in 5 years is correct as pointed out by @Opus 17.
Let me put it another way.
Suppose you booked a trip for someone that was $1000, of which $100 was your commission. They cancel and you refund the $1000. You can report the $1000 received as gross sales and the $1000 paid back as an expense. You don't record anything extra for the lost $100 of commission income. You never received it, so it won't be taxed, but it's not an additional deduction.
@Bsch4477 wrote:
Not sure what loss commission is. If it is money you would have gotten but did not, you can’t deduct that. Many businesses do not have a profit from time to time. If you have good records you need not be concerned. If you have a loss more than 2 times in 5 years you will be considered as having a hobby and can’t deduct any expenses.
EDIT. 3 times in 5 years is correct as pointed out by @Opus 17.
Note that even if you have several years of losses and the IRS presumes you really have a hobby, that is a rebuttable presumption. You can still try to show (if you can) that it is a legitimate business, by a showing of facts and circumstances.
The IRS does not presume that an activity is a hobby (or not engaged in for profit). The IRS considers all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the activity.
There is a rebuttable presumption that an activity is engaged in for profit if the activity is profitable in at least three of the last five tax years.