What To Do With Your Etsy 1099

Even if you sell other places than Etsy, if you sell more than $600 in a year, you could receive a tax form called 1099-MISC. What now!

I’ve worked for both HR Block and Jackson-Hewitt, so when I got the email from Etsy today, I researched what that meant for me. Tax laws change every year, and can be super confusing. Don’t feel like a failure if you “can’t” do your own taxes – the Tax Code, with commentary from challenges and such, runs to over 1000 pages … and last time I looked was in 2008.

In the past, if you received a 1099-MISC, you were REQUIRED to fill out a Schedule C – Self-Employment form. This became a huge problem when one year PayPal sent out 1099’s with no warning. I guess “hobby income” was a new concept for them? It’s certainly not a new concept in general. Last tax year when I looked it up, I found that it is no longer a requirement.

Before 2008, the next year’s tax laws were finalized in the previous fall, so that tax preparers can study all the new info. That’s no longer the case, but we know what the PROPOSED changes are, so we cross our fingers.

The information is always available on IRS.gov, but not everyone speaks “tax code”. Also, it’s not always easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, even if you’ve been using the website for a decade. Here’s the pertinent info from the HR Block website.

Question
I have a question about 1099-MISC Box 3 — How do I report a Form 1099-MISC with an amount in Box 3?

Answer
The amount shown on Form 1099-MISC Box 3 is usually from one of these:
Prizes
Awards
Taxable damages
Certain benefits of a deceased employee
Medical research participation payments
Legal damages
Indian gaming profits
Other taxable income

You’ll usually report this income on Form 1040, Line 21, as Other income. This is taxable income not subject to self-employment tax. When the income reported on Form 1099-MISC Box 3 is from your trade or business, report it with your business income.

If you keep track of expenses and want to take them off of your taxes, you’ll want to file it as business income (Schedule C). If you haven’t already, research what you can include, such as mileage to the Post Office/ other shipping service.

If you also do “gig work” like I do, here’s a very handy IRS article.

You can see the form and instructions on that site also, buy doing a search for “Schedule C”.

Hope this helps someone!

Ads will be back temporarily

I’m so sorry!

You know this summer’s been a bit lean. Also, here in Phoenix, a million degrees. Farenheit.

So, my WordPress ad-free plan is coming up for renewal, and I’m going to have to not renew. I’m sad, but they’re given me free server space to host my blog, so I can’t complain. Much.

Hopefully this Halloween will be pretty good for me, and I can get it back up for you soon.

Jayne Hat Page Update

Major update to The Ultimate Jayne Hat Pattern ! I’m moving from selling finished hats to selling kits, so I had to create a pattern to include. I went to the original entry, and realized there were a LOT of little tips & tricks I could add, that I hadn’t included before.

I’m in the middle of THE VERY LAST JAYNE HAT I WILL EVER MAKE in order to take pictures. Someone ordered a kit and then cancelled, messaging me that she had saved the link to order a hat. I had been dragging my @$$ , not wanting to make another one to measure the yardage, so I messaged her, letting her know if she wanted, I’ll make this one last one, lol.

So anyway, pics will be coming soon eventually. 🙂

Finally Ad-Free!

Funky!

Yeah, so having to deal with the code with a WordPress blog was more than I care to handle these days, so I paid for a plan here. Of my two favorite author blogs, one has a paid WordPress.com, and one hosts his own WordPress.org site. They both look great! While I used to code websites by hand back in the 1990’s, and with Dreamweaver in the Naughties, There are other things I want to do with my time … like creating new patterns! I’ll finally post the Amabie pattern over the weekend, then get back to work on my Funky Puffs, an amigurumi version of those Funko Pop figures.

I’m so happy to not inflict ads on you anymore, and I love the new theme. I’m going to work on a gallery here on my site (so that you don’t have to go over to Flickr to see all my pictures), and Paypal buttons so you don’t have to go to Etsy or Ravelry – unless you want to, I spend a lot of quality time on each myself!

Witch hat – just in time for Halloween!

witch hat picture
How to hide the fact that you look terrible without makeup. But also don’t feel like putting on makeup.

Look at that! I play a lot of casual mobile games, and the ones with cute witch girls are always wearing hats where the peak bends down. I wanted one! I thought that surely a pattern must exist by now … but no. So, it was up to me!

I knew I wanted to make it top-down, so that it’s easier to adjust for size, like my Pokeball Santa Hat. I also like to work in a spiral, which avoids a seam anywhere. I’ve followed many other designer’s patterns that had bends and curves, so I thought, hey, I can do this. The annoying thing about designing patterns is the sheer amount of ripping out involved. Soooooo much ripping out. But once you get a finished product, it’s so very satisfying to think “I did that!”

I actually made it last year, but the cousin that was testing it for me passed away from the cancer she was fighting, and it was too sad to look at it. When I realized it was September again, I decided that I couldn’t let all her work go to waste. I also thought about something a friend said; she considers knitting & crocheting like witchcraft. “You wave sticks around, and suddenly a string becomes a sweater!”

The hat in the picture above has handfuls of stiff tulle stuffed up in the peak to keep it’s shape. It’s far more lightweight than polyfill, and doesn’t weigh the had down and pull it off your head while you wear it. I had some thin armature wire left over from making some dragons (patterns by Crafty Intentions available on Ravelry), so I crocheted that into the brim. You can also get hat wire online; I couldn’t find it at any stores locally pre-quarentimes.

floppy witch hat picture
Totally floppy – no stuffing, no hat wire

black witch hat picture
Stick some decoration on! Crocheted hat band (instructions in pattern) and a plastic glittery Christmas floral spray.

Because of all the work, I’m making this a paid pattern on Etsy or Ravlery. But, I’ll be back soon with a free Amabie pattern!

If you have questions, feel free to comment or contact me on Etsy or Ravelry.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

OK, so things might look a bit weird around here for a while. I’m migrating the blog from WordPress.com, to a self-hosted WordPress site. I was thinking of just paying WordPress.com to take the ads off of my site, but you have to pay separately for all your blogs, and I actually have four, lol (I have an author blog even though I haven’t been published yet, and two personal blogs).

Also, I haven’t been able to log into my Flickr account to add pictures for ages. I went through the migration away from Yahoo, but now the login info I have saved in Last Pass doesn’t work, and I can’t get a password reset to any email address I’ve ever had (the help article under “Can’t log in with an email address” is literally “try every one you’ve ever had”. Helpful!). Anyway, by building my own WordPress site, there are way more plug-ins available, including photo galleries.

Soooooo ….. are you seeing weird random theme photos & stuff? Sorry! Of course, the laptop with all my logo pics & everything died, lol. Everything on my new laptop gets backed up to Dropbox (who I absolutely pay for extra space, since it works on my phone & everything, too). OF COURSE I hadn’t installed the Dropbox desktop app on the old lappy yet, I had to many new things to do to worry about old stuff! And now, here I am needing old files. Dang it!

Anyway. Pardon our mess during construction.

I have a couple products I need to post, but I’ve also been dealing with gallstones all during quarantine because my life is the BEST AND YOU KNOW YOU ALL WANT TO BE ME!!! Yes, that was humor. However, I finally have surgery scheduled! I don’t know if that will make easier for me to post since I’ll be in bed, or harder because of the recovery, lol. I guess we’ll see!

Brown Mailing Paper: Will It Print?

YES!

You may have to wrestle it a bit, but it was worth it for me.

I didn’t even know that Imgur Secret Santa was a thing, but I am so stoked to be a part of it!

At this point I’ve sold over 300 of these hats, so I’m pretty sick of looking at them, lol (that number doesn’t include the amount that I made for charity Browncoat events, which is how I got into the Cunning Hat biz in the first place), but I do like the money!

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