Taxation of this Sharing Economy:
The Internet, along with its rising social media, has created some very new opportunities for people to earn extra cash. This ‘sharing economy’ theme is defined as this – Putting up some unused resource either for sale or for rent (like a skill, parked vehicle, or empty room). This might seem a bit minor at first, but according to one statistic, this sharing economy actually represents as much as a $110 Billion dollar market.
One community marketplace for finding or listing or booking lodging all over the world, is Airbnb. This is done on the Internet and by mobile phones. They carry more than 500,000 listings for 33,000 cities, in 192 countries worldwide.
The Benefits:
If a taxpayer rents out a property for less than 15 days a year, they don’t have to report that income or the expenses on their tax returns. This enables them to rent out property for short periods of time with NO TAX liabilities. In order to qualify for this exception, all you have to do is use your home personally for over 14 days, or for 10% of the overall number of days, that you rented it out to other people for a fair price.
Another Investment Possibility: Prosper and LendingClub
If you are not someone with a spare bedroom or car that you can share, but you have available cash sitting around, you can make some money this way. Peer to peer lending through sites like Prosper or LendingClub gives you the opportunity to earn some extra cash. They allow individuals to either lend or borrow money, with a certain degree of anonymity, using interest rates that are credit score based. Risk levels are also factored in. Both of these sites will allow investors to lend out their money in increments as low as $25.