Can we ask tax questions in this group?

[SheilaT]

7. I had a similar question a couple of years

ago of my accountant. I crochet scarves and make earrings and sell them casually. I perhaps make as much as a thousand dollars in a good year.

My accountant said that it was definitely a hobby and that the IRS really didn't care that much about such a trivial amount of money.

We did not discuss if there was some maximum you could make beyond which what you were doing was no longer a hobby, but a business.

Perhaps you can go to one of those free things that groups do for senior citizens in connection with taxes and get a definitive answer there.

But then, given how complex our tax code is, definitive answers rarely exist. One way to think about this is to ask yourself some questions like, How likely is the IRS to figure out how much money I'm making? How likely are they to want to get their share?

The bigger deal might be if your local taxing agency (city, county, state) takes an interest in what you're doing. My little scarf and earring sales readily fly under the radar, because I either get a table at a craft fair, or just sell on a casual basis to people I know.