4 ms·

up to the prison part, it is largely accurate. The punishment is just more likely to be penalties and expensive audits.

• otherme123 5y ago
  My wife is currently facing a fine because she had some extra income in 2020 that the local IRS don't understand. Not that it's illegal, shady or remotely fraudulent: they just don't understand how could she earn some small money (around $500) doing X when she mainly does Y. The "solution" they deem as legal is to create a whole new bussiness dedicated to do X, or refuse to do it. And to my eyes X and Y are related (like doing a security audit to a web and building a web), but IRS don't think so.
  • vxNsr 5y ago
    There's another form you can fill out for extra income... I don't know your situation but it's likely you didn't fill out that form but someone on the other side of that transaction did.
    • ineedasername 5y ago
      If it's basically pass-through income from a business then you fill out (in the US) a Schedule C. And you do one for each business like that. And you also have to separately fill out the medicare & social security taxes, paying both the employer and employee side of it. It sounds complicated, but paying about $100 for the TurboTax edition that handles small businesses will make it fairly easy. Yep, they've got strong regulatory capture in this space, but business income isn't always straight forward so I would consider ~$100 well worth it. Though I'm sure that some dead-simple home businesses really wouldn't need it.