Question

Can someone please explain to me the Hobby Loss Rule Sec. 183? I am still confused about it. It would also help if an example was provided with the explanation.

Answer 1

This section requires you to report hobby income on your tax return but you can also deduct some expenses.

In a nutshell, profit is when your income exceeds your expenses.To give you a simple example ,imagine you spend $100 for buying craft supplies to make braceletes and you sell the braceletes for $800.your profit is $700.

According to this section, if profit is rare, you have a hobby,but if you regularly earn profit,you have a bussiness.

specifically if you turned a profit of three of the last 5 years,you probably have a business.

When it comes to breeding, showing, training, or racing horses, you only need to make a profit in two of the last seven years for the IRS to consider your hobby a business.

In some cases, you may be eligible to claim a hobby tax deduction. That means you can write off some expenses related to the hobby, but you cannot write off more than you earn.

In addition, you can only write hobby expenses if you itemize your deductions. If you claim the standard deduction, you can’t write off expenses for your hobby.

The IRS loses about $40 billion per year in unpaid taxes due to people deducting hobby expenses that aren’t eligible. To qualify as deductible, hobby expenses must be useful and necessary. For example, if you show horses, a saddle is a useful expense. If you collect stamps, a book to store them in is a useful and necessary expense.

Other eligible hobby expenses include advertising, insurance premiums, and wages paid to people who help with the hobby. You can also claim hobby deductions for depreciation related to property used in your hobby. For example, if you have a desk that you only use for your jewelry making hobby, you can depreciate that asset over time and claim part of its value as a hobby deduction. But, again, in all these cases, you cannot deduct more than you earn from the hobby.

If your expenses are more than your income, you have a hobby loss, but you can’t deduct that from your income. In contrast, if you have a business loss, you usually can deduct that from income in another year. If you want to dive deeper into the law, IRC 183 explains the IRS hobby loss rules in detail.

If the IRS thinks your business is a hobby, that means you have to follow the IRC 183 hobby loss rules. Namely, you don’t get to claim the loss against income in another year. If your activities are really a business, you don’t want them classified as a hobby, because that increases your tax liability.