#side-hustle
Side Hustle
Tax, accounting, and growth tips for side projects, freelancers, and part-time businesses
Goatscaping Bookkeeping: How to Account for a Targeted Grazing Business
A working goat herd is livestock the IRS lets you treat as either inventory or depreciable business property — an election that's hard to reverse. How targeted grazing operators should handle herd cost basis, diversified revenue streams, equipment costs, and the May-to-September seasonal cash-flow cliff.
Storage Unit Auction Reselling: How to Book a Lot You've Never Seen Inside
How storage unit auction resellers allocate one lump-sum bid across an entire unit of unknown items — dividing by item count or by relative fair market value — plus the cash-method small-business inventory election, a lot-based chart of accounts, hobby-vs-business rules, and sales tax registration.
Storage Unit Auction Reselling Bookkeeping: How to Price a Lot You've Never Opened
How to keep books for storage-unit auction flips — allocate one winning bid across dozens of items with the relative fair value method, deduct COGS only when items sell, use the Section 471(c) small-business exception, and report income even below the $20,000/200-transaction 1099-K threshold.
Vinted Just Came to America. Here's Why Your Bookkeeping Needs to Change, Not Just Your App.
Vinted's January 2026 US launch charges sellers zero fees — buyers pay a ~5% protection fee instead — but its Wallet holds funds 7–10 days before they reach your bank. Here's how to book Vinted sales with a dedicated wallet asset account, why the zero-fee model makes 1099-K reconciliation a one-step check, and what marketplace facilitator rules mean for sales tax.
Virginia's HB 402: Cottage Food Producers Can Now Sell Online and Ship Statewide
Virginia's House Bill 402, effective July 1, 2026, lets cottage food producers accept online orders and electronic payments, sell from any location in the Commonwealth, ship via third-party carriers within the state, and list a PO box on product labels. Production limits stay in place — home kitchens only, no potentially hazardous foods, no wholesale, no interstate shipping, and the $9,000 acidified-food sales cap — and localities can still impose their own zoning or permit requirements.
Colorado's Tamale Act: What HB26-1033 Means for Cottage Food Businesses
Colorado's HB26-1033, the "Tamale Act," legalizes home-kitchen sales of tamales and other temperature-sensitive foods starting January 1, 2027, and raises the cottage food revenue cap from $10,000 to $150,000 per product per year. Here are the food-safety, labeling, and transport rules producers must meet — and the bookkeeping needed to run at the new scale.
North Carolina's HB 372 Home-Based Business Fairness Act: What Home Entrepreneurs Need to Know
North Carolina's HB 372, signed July 7, 2026 as Session Law 2026-51, bars cities from requiring permits, licenses, or rezoning for "no-impact" home-based businesses. Here's who qualifies, what cities can still regulate, and how the change affects your bookkeeping.
West Virginia's New Cottage Food Permit: How SB 44 Lets Home Producers Sell Pickled, Fermented, and Refrigerated Foods
West Virginia's Senate Bill 44, effective June 12, 2026, created a potentially hazardous cottage food vendor permit that lets home producers legally sell pickled and fermented vegetables, acidified salsas and hot sauces, kombucha, and refrigerated items like custards and cream pies. The permit requires a kitchen inspection, food safety training, a WVDA permit, and water testing for kitchens on private wells, while raw meat, poultry, seafood, and Grade A dairy remain prohibited under both cottage food tiers.
How Sports Card and Collectibles Reselling Is Taxed: The 28% Rate, Cost Basis, and the IRS's Three Buckets
Collectibles like sports cards are taxed at a maximum 28% long-term capital gains rate under IRC Section 408(m) — higher than the 15–20% most stock investors pay. Whether you owe that rate, ordinary income rates up to 37%, or can deduct grading and shipping fees depends on whether the IRS sees you as a hobbyist, investor, or dealer. Here's how the classification works, what belongs in your cost basis, and why a 1099-K doesn't change what you owe.
Bookkeeping for Affiliate Income: Amazon Associates, LTK, and ShareASale
Amazon Associates pays roughly 60 days in arrears, ShareASale and Impact pay per merchant program rather than as a single payer, and the 2026 1099-NEC threshold rose from $600 to $2,000 — so most affiliate income now arrives with no tax form at all, making a monthly earned-basis reconciliation the only reliable way to track what you actually owe.
Discord Server Subscriptions and the 1099-K: Why Your Tax Form Shows More Than You Were Paid
Discord issues 1099-Ks through Stripe reporting gross subscriber payments, not your net payout after the ~10% platform fee, Stripe processing, and app-store cuts. Here's how server owners reconcile the gap on Schedule C, what the restored $20,000/200-transaction federal threshold means for 2026, and the self-employment tax that applies either way.
Bookkeeping for House-Sitting Businesses: Per-Night Rates, Deposits, and Key Liability
House sitters typically charge $50–$150 per night for overnight stays and $250–$500 weekly, but a deposit collected before a sit begins is unearned revenue, not income, until the stay is completed or the cancellation window passes.