169 – Make Hobbies Tax Deductible: Tom talks Hobbies

Episode 169 - Hobbies
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with Episode 169 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about how to make your hobbies and family activities tax deductible. So be ready for that. Hey. Why don't you tell your friends about this podcast? Look, you know, you got somebody in your life that wants to start a business or is in a business and needs some nice help. So send them over to this podcast and we've got lots of good tips for them. And have them get our podcast app and you get it, too, in the iTunes store. You can go to screwthecommute.com/app and take us with you on the road. It does all kinds of fancy stuff for you and then tell your friend and yourself to grab our freebie at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. This is my automation e-book. Tells you how all kinds of tips and tricks to automate your cell phone and your business and all that stuff. So don't miss that. All right. I'm looking for affiliates. You've been following this podcast for a while. You know, I have lots of products and services. I don't get complaints. I don't get refund requests. So you can make a lot of money referring stuff. I mean, even my school, you can get a 38 hundred dollar commission for referring my Internet marketing school. It's the only licensed dedicated school of its kind in the country. And my mentor program, you can make big bucks and then and certain kinds of speaking engagements, you can get probably five thousand dollars or more. All right. So you want to check this out.

[00:02:01] All right. Let's get to the main event. This is going to be one of the shortest podcasts I've done, but really, really powerful for people out there that they're in business or or thinking about it or they just want to, you know, enjoy their life and get tax deductions for it. That's what we're going to talk about. But first, let me state right up front that I'm not an attorney or an accountant and I'm not qualified to give you tax advice. Technically. So I encourage you to get professional opinion on what I talk about in today's episode, but just because I don't have professional qualifications on this topic does not mean I can't give you my opinion. And also, I've spoken in front of lots of audiences around the world, many of which had accountants and attorneys in the audience who agreed that what I'm proposing in this episode is absolutely sound. Now, what I'm talking about is making your hobbies in your family interests tax deductible. Now, when I look around at people enjoying their hobbies and taking their kids to soccer tournaments and the myriad of other things individuals and families spend money on, I can assure you virtually all of them. I mean, probably ninety nine percent of them just spend the money and get no credit for spending the money. Of course, past the enjoyment of doing whatever they were spending the money on. Now, in today's business atmosphere and with the cheap and free business tools available today, to me this is just ridiculous and it's hurting families. I mean, they could be enjoying their hobby or family activity and doing that hobby or activity even more. And at the same time, getting tax deductions and even earning money from doing the activity. I'm sure lots of people listening to this feel a little bit or a lot guilty for spending the money, let's say buying nice golf clubs and paying high greens fees to play golf and maybe they got a golf club membership, but they got golf clothing and meals and caddies and balls and all the other expenses that go along with playing golf. And I've spoken to many people about this in the course of my career. And it's not uncommon for family arguments and and lots of resentments. And when I say resentments, it's on both spouses. I mean, let's say the spouse that wants to play golf all weekend resents the fact the other spouse puts him on a guilt trip.

[00:04:42] And the other spouse resents when the other spouse goes to play. So, I mean, and there have been lots of cases of divorce over these kinds of issues. Now, I'm not claiming this podcast is going to save everyone in the world from getting a divorce, but it like the old starfish story, maybe I'll make a difference by just saving one divorce. If you're too young to know the starfish story, go look it up.

[00:05:14] Here's another example, let's say there's no resentment involved. Let's say the entire family loves to go camping. Mean maybe you have an RV and you go to RV parks. I mean, you could. Vlog about it or video blog about it. You could do product reviews. You could have thousands of people on YouTube following your exploits.

[00:05:37] There's another example, let's say you collect antique watches. You could do an e-book about how to collect, how to collect them, how much to pay for them, how to get them appraised and all that stuff. And it could sell that e-book to other watch collectors. I mean, the list ideas, hobbies and family activities is endless.

[00:05:59] All right. So let's get busy showing you the method to get rid of the guilt and maybe make some money from your hobbies and family activities. And when I say make some money, saving taxes is just the same in my book as making money. And the less taxes you pay, the more money that stays in your pocket. And in some cases, your hobby could make you so much money you'll be desperate for more tax deductions.

[00:06:26] All right. Here we go. One of the basic methods is to buy a domain name and put in a word press or put up a WordPress Web site about your topic and you should have less of this. No more than one hundred and fifty bucks in that entire process. Don't go out and spend a couple thousand bucks to have some web designer doing it for you. You can easily learn to do it yourself. Of course, I've got a cheap course on it that includes some help from my tech people. You can check it out at screwthecommute.com/WordPressecourse. And of course that'll be in the show notes. And you can also listen to the Screw the Commute podcast, number four, which is on cheap Web sites. Ah, another method would be to become a YouTube. You don't even need a Web site to use this method. But you always do better and have a better chance of actually making some money with a Web site. So YouTube is another way you can do what I'm talking about here. Now, with either method, you still aren't technically in business yet without some kind of mechanism to earn your money. You can't just have a hobby site with no way to bring in money and expect the IRS to give you business tax deductions. Now I'm going to get to that money thing in a minute. But but first, I may give you a couple of ways you can operate the site.

[00:07:55] You could simply have a blog and regularly post about your topic. You could have a Vlog or video log and regularly post videos about your topic. There is a third way.

[00:08:11] It is not. I mean, there's more ways than this, but this is these are three simple ones. You could start a discussion board sometimes called a forum about your topic and other people could post questions and answers about your topic. This is called user generated content. In other words, other people are making your site bigger and bigger and bigger.

[00:08:34] Ok, let's get to the money. Well, one way to earn money is to build traffic to your site and put affiliate products on your site. Now, when someone clicks through your affiliate link and purchases the product from someone else, you get an affiliate commission. And with this method, you don't have to develop a product yourself. Or write a sales letter or anything. You just have to get people to your site that are interested in your topic. And when they click and buy, you get paid. Now, if you like this idea, make sure you go back and listen to episode 52 on affiliate marketing. Now you are going to need probably at the bare minimum, a PayPal account so that you can accept the money. A full blown merchant account is a little higher level where you'll have a lot of fees involved. But get a PayPal account to get this started because that's how affiliates will probably pay you.

[00:09:30] Another way to earn money is to use an advertising model. There are ad networks. I mean, the most famous is Google ad sense, where you put some code on your site and the ad network feeds ads to your site. And one method to make money is you get paid when someone clicks on the ad. Another method to get paid by other ad networks is simply by displaying the ad. You make your money whether someone clicks or not.

[00:09:59] That's always your job. To get traffic to the site by providing great content about your hobby is what I'm talking about here. Like blog postings, video blog postings or like in the discussion board, lots of great questions and answers and comments.

[00:10:16] Another way to make money is to develop your own product. This is, I would say, is the highest degree of evidence to the IRS that you are really trying to make money. Example this is my Fatsotennis.com site. I'm a tennis nut. So to do what I'm telling you to do, I created a two DVD set called Winning Tennis for the Overweight and hopelessly out of shape. I mean, it's a 40 dollar DVD set. It's funny on one hand, but shows serious techniques, tips and tricks for out of shape people to beat younger, lighter and faster people than they are. Now, if you're just starting out, you could simply make an e-book about your topic. I covered e-books in episode 70 of this podcast and don't think you have to be an expert on your topic to create products. Many products are created simply by interviewing people that are really good at your topic. You compile the interviews and put them out in e-book format.

[00:11:23] So, folks, this is probably one of the shortest training podcasts I've done. But it could easily be one of the most powerful for you with a little effort, you could have a side hustle based around something you love to do already and you're most likely spending money on it even if it doesn't cost you anything to do your hobby or family activity. There's still money to be made from your tax savings, from the deductions you will qualify for by being in your own business. And before you dismiss this as too much hassle, pretty much all you have to do to be in business is get a simple business license and file a schedule C profit and loss statement with your taxes. I mean you don't have to become a fancy corporation or LLC if you don't want to. I mean, of course you should get professional advice from your accountant or attorney. Keep in mind they're mostly conservative and trying to keep you out of trouble rather than showing you how to move forward. So just take whatever they say with a grain of salt. So take this idea and run with it. And many people before you have. And I've never heard anyone regret doing it.

[00:12:35] So, folks, I would love to see you if you'd like to really jump in to an online business. I'm the guy for you. I have the longest running, most successful mentor program in the Internet marketing arena and I triple dog dare you to find anybody to challenge that. It's been running over 20 years. Seventeen hundred students, probably more than that in the early years that I haven't kept track of. Oh, and very unique program in that we charge you a relatively small entry fee and then take a percentage of your profits. That's capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. And currently the cap is 50,000. So for me to get fifty thousand, you have to clear two hundred thousand. And I'll tell you what, most people were very happy with that idea. And like I said, seventeen hundred students later, they're still joining and there's still we're still going strong. And we have very unique elements to this first. Me and my entire staff talk to you one on one tutor you here. Hold your hand through all of this.

[00:13:42] You're not just lumped in with a group like all the other these gurus we're trying to charge of 50 or 100 grand up front. And then they wouldn't even help you. You could even talk to him. That's B.S. in my book. So. So we help you one on one. We take over your screen, if necessary, to show you where to click and how to do stuff. And it's just the amazing results we get from people. Then you get an immersion weekend at the great Internet Marketing Retreat Center. It's the only facility of its kind in the world where you actually live in this estate home with me for an immersion weekend. You have no expenses while you're here. All you gotta do is get the Norfolk International Airport. We pick you up in a limo and yeah, it's that day to evening training, all meals included. You actually stay here in the house. You tell me where you can find that anywhere on this earth where the guy at my level. So that's one thing.

[00:14:41] Then another thing. I have the only license dedicated Internet marketing school in the world. I say the country is probably the world and you get a scholarship to that that you can either use yourself or gift to somebody. And we had a guy join about four months ago. My mentor program, he gifted the scholarship to his daughter, who he had spent eighty thousand dollars on her education and she had a low level job somewhere, and after one month only in the school, she was making eleven hundred dollars on the side. She just e-mailed me this week, said she's making three thousand dollars a month, you know, quitting her other job and she can barely keep up.

[00:15:23] And she's been in two months and she's got for at least four more months of training to go in the school. So this is very powerful. Nuts and bolts, real world stuff that I have been living since I started selling on the Internet when there was an Internet with commercial Internet around 1994. So I've been doing this a long time and I only teach stuff that works because, hey, if you don't make a lot of money, I don't get my big money. So I don't give you a work, that's for sure. So check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and you'll get all the details.

[00:16:03] All right, folks. That's it for this episode. Make your hobbies and family activities tax deductible. You'll be way ahead at the end of the year and you'll enjoy those activities way more when you don't feel guilty about spending any money. All right. We'll catch on the next episode. See ya later.

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