Tips, Strategies, and Resources for Mystery Shoppers
This is a guest post written by Tabitha, a member of the msfreedom.org forum. Also, please note that any tax information is not guaranteed to be accurate (You know I have to say that!)
I see a bunch of newbies asking for tips about MSIng so I decided to put all my tips in one place. Many relate to tax time and record keeping and some are year round goodies. Continue reading ‘8 Tips to Make Mystery Shopping Easier’
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.
Do I need to pay taxes on my mystery shopping earnings?
Yes — you are required to report all of the money that you receive as a mystery shopper to the IRS. This means that you report all of your fees AND your reimbursements.
As a mystery shopper, you are considered an ‘independent contractor.’ Which basically means you are running your own business, and the mystery shopping companies are your clients.
That means you will do your taxes as though you were a ’sole proprietor’ of a business. Effectively, you will end up paying taxes on the total profit you earned during the year. This is actually very good news, because it means you are open to a whole new world of deductions that AREN’T otherwise available. (More about deductions) Continue reading ‘Taxes & Mystery Shopping: Questions and Answers’
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’
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