# The tax dilemma- professional artist or amateur?



## MikeH (Jul 21, 2013)

Very interesting article

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/displa ... -tax-audit


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## reeltracks (Jul 22, 2013)

very interesting article.

Kinda a joke if the Dept. of Revenue takes profit as the litmus test to see if you are a hobbyist or professional. Any small business owner can tell you that you won't see any (significant) profit for the first 5 years unless you are extremely lucky and break even early on. Heck, Amazon didn't make any profits for the first 7 years! So Amazon wasn't a professional business because they didn't make enough profit? I know that different legal entities have different tax laws applied to them, but still...


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## MikeH (Jul 22, 2013)

And, god forbid, you actually ENJOY your work! :roll: 


_It listed several reasons, chief among them that de Mars took too much pleasure from her work, and didn't work hard enough to make a profit. As a result, state officials say she owes thousands of dollars in back taxes._


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