Scuba and Taxes

[SchoonCR]

Not sure WHAT forum to put this in!

I was certified, and immediately feel in love with diving over the past couple years.

Last year, I took Scuba 3, and Dive Recon, and am now in a position to begin training other divers.

My question - What are the tax ramifications when you begin training? Does your equipment and expenses become business expenses, and therefore tax write offs?



Curious. thanks!

 

[sealkie]

only if you pay taxes on you income from diving - you have to show a profit or it just gets considered income from a hobby

 

[SchoonCR]

only if you pay taxes on you income from diving - you have to show a profit or it just gets considered income from a hobby

Is there a limit to this? IE... I customer, 1 payment.

Anyplace I can find info on this? Thanks for your post!

 

[LUBOLD8431]

Talk to your tax professional. This is an area where you can get screwed by the IRS if you mess up something... It depends how much money you get from scuba related employment.

 

[pipedope]

A good tax account and tax lawyer are the people to see on this question.

 

[sealkie]

I would check with your accountant - As far as I know I don`t think there are any hard rules - you have to make enough money such that it`s not considered casual hobby income before you can start claiming expenses against it. My accountant considered my annual income of $5000 borderline. You have to show that you are doing the activity with a motive for profit - so 1 customer 1 payment will not fly. It helped my case that I work as a employee - albeit part time - for a dive shop and did fairly regular hours during the year.

I found this article which was pretty good

http://taxes.about.com/cs/capitalgains/a/busin_hobbyloss.htm