Please not that I am not a tax professional, so please understand that this in not tax advice, and may not be accurate. I recommend consulting an accountant. Also, TurboTax is very helpful in walking you through filing your taxes.
Being a mystery shopper means you are an independent contractor — which means you are effectively running your own small business.
With that, comes a load of advantages with your taxes. Yes, your taxes will be a little more complicated, but you get to have a whole slew of deductions that would otherwise have been unavailable to you.
This is important, because many people LOSE a lot of money because they miss out on their deductions.
When filling out your IRS forms, you get to do something called a Schedule C. This is where you report all of the money you’ve been paid as part of your business (yes, all of it!). But you also get to report ALL of your expenses. And with mystery shopping, there are a lot of expenses. Continue reading ‘The Hidden Money in Your Tax Return’