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Paying taxes on survey earnings


Pete

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I ran across a post the other day that mentioned paying taxes on income from online survey sites. this was posted on the survey police site and I happened to run across it..........U.S. law requires market research companies based in the U.S. to report any amount over $600.00 paid to an individual over a single calendar year, on form 1099. If you reach this threshold, the research company is required to obtain your social security number so that the form may be filed with the IRS. This is the only time when it is acceptable to provide a research company with your social security number. I don't know if any one here is making over 600 a calendar year doing surveys but if you aren't you will not receive a 1099 from any research company. Just a little info for anyone that might be worried about a tax burden from taking online surveys. If you are making over 600 dollars a calendar year well congratulations!............... :P

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Ah. The elephant in the room rears it's ugly head once again. Taxes on survey earnings.

Depending on how you read your post you may or may not be implying if you make less than $600 from any site none of your survey earnings are taxable because no 1099 was filed. You make a buck from any website it's taxable, 1099 or no 1099. An extreme example - say you make $599 from 30 websites. That's nearly $18,000. I would think that's all taxable. The only way it's not taxable that I can see is if your survey income doesn't put your total income over the threshold for reportable taxes, in other words, you don't make enough annual income including your survey earnings to have to file taxes. All that said, I'd like to know if anyone out there in the paid survey world has ever had trouble with the IRS over not claiming a few hundred bucks in survey earnings.

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well with me...I'm on social Security disability and I don't file taxes on My earnings.... so if a survey company doesn't report anything over $600.00 in a calendar year then I'm not sure How the IRS would know of my earnings. Also I only do for cash payal surveys and Paypal has never asked for any Tax ID info. Is there anyway I could be audited if I don't file taxes in the First place?

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  • 4 years later...

Hey I know I'm late to the discussion but this is new to me. I'm trying to figure out how to file. I got a W9 from a panel, but someone I talked to said I should have also gotten a 1099 from them, which I didn't. And that person also said that I need the info on it to file properly. None of the websites that I've been reading when it comes to filing on paid surveys have all the answers I need. One site will say that I need this, another will say I don't need it per say, or something. All very confusing. So I inquired the panel about the 1099 but haven't heard back yet. Do I actually need it or at least some sort of statement of my earnings in order to file, or can I just put how much I earned on the form when I file? I printed the redemption histories for each site I cashed out with but that seems silly to me I don't know if I need something more official or if any type of proof will do, or if I even need proof/statement from them at all. 

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The person you talked to is incorrect. Survey sites you earned more than $600 with, might send you a 1099 (though they also might not). If you don't earn that much, they almost certainly won't send you one. If they do send you one, you would obviously be set, as you could just report exactly what was on that document (assuming you agreed with it). If they don't send you one (I haven't earned $600 with any sites other than mturk any given year, and mturk doesn't ever send 1099s), you just have to add up all the payments yourself, and report that. You don't need statements for the purposes of proof (I suppose at least unless you were to get audited, which would be pretty unlikely), but clearly, you do need them in terms of you need some way of being able to determine how much you made (if you aren't already doing this, in the future, I would suggest writing it down somewhere every time you get paid, so at the end of the year, you can just add up that list.)

Of course, if you didn't earn very much from a given site, they also probably didn't report it to the IRS, so you're sort of on the honor system to report it (again, at least unless you're audited). But you still should, clearly. ;)

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