[FullertonImages]

This is true for personal income taxes. For business, the rule is that you always file. That is why the OP needs to talk to a professional, not random people on the internet.

Got it. Sounds reasonable. I totally agree. Talking to professionals is always a smart idea. How does that work with sole proprietorship, when the taxes are all rolled into one?

[FullertonImages]

I realize. I guess I really jsut want a name to my hobby. I have a great full time job, I dont plan on ever quitting for photography, (unless something amazing happens, but i doubt it) Its more of just a weekend hobby. I like taking pictures, and i like riding my bike. I just dont want to make photography a SECOND full time job as to where im not longer riding my bike on weekends, Im just taking pictures of others. See what I mean?
I want the best of both worlds I guess... Still be able to have my weekends free (from work that is, not the honey-do list lol) but if someone calls me up and says, 'hey man, ill pay ya 50 bucks if you come out and take some cool pics of my car club' i can go do that too.

I just know alot of people that have full time jobs, and every friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night they have a wedding to shoot, as well as the occasional Sunday, monday... tue.... lol. It gets to be a bother. I dont want photography to ever be 'tiring'. Its suppose to be fun, I would rather do it for fun, and possibly make $50 or $60 here and there, than to do it as a full time business and have to tell my buddies 'sorry guys, cant ride this weekend, gotta take pictures of someone elses bike as it sits parked as well'

And that's totally fine. But you just run into problems trying to officially call something like that a business. The IRS wants buinesses to be profitable, and will not look kindly upon things that are just buying all this stuff, writing it off, and then not making any money from it. I've been told that you have 2-3 years where you can pretty much lose money as a business and not have any questions asked, since the IRS understands that major investment is at play, and most business start-ups aren't profitable for a bit. But the longer you go spending lots of money as a business and not making much, the bigger of a red flag you become to the IRS, and it won't be long until they are knocking on your door with some questions.

That's basically what my accountant told me, as I remember it. As has already come up in this thread, seek professional advice.

Also, I think you're confusing skill level, quality and value with amount of time spent working. I totally get that you don't want this to be a second job, but that doesn't mean that you should only do low quality work and not charge much for it. There's not a big time commitment difference between doing decent work and really good work isn't that big; and the difference between charging peanuts and charging decent money for something is nil. Just because you only want to do something here and there and on you own schedule, doesn't mean that you should sell yourself short and only strive for mediocrity. If you want somethingto feel like more work than it's worth, the easiest way to do hat is to drastically under charge.

Cheers,
Ben

[Tremaine]

Well I will chime in on what a photographer told me. He was in business 30 years. "Be a great photographer and horrible at business and you will fail be a great businessman and decent at photography and you have a career hell i did it all these years "

[MRRiley]

I haven't done this personally (in fact I'm in the same boat as you), but I think it would still be good to create an official business through an LLC just for the tax write-offs on your gear. Anyone want to chide in with more info on this (that was the extent of my knowledge :P)?

Careful with the gear writeoff idea... The IRS expects you to make an actual profit at least occasionally. If you go too long losing money and just writing off gear you will most certainly get audited and then your life will get very complicated.

Mike

[ajoe]

Also, don't forget about sales tax, which varies from state to state. Sales tax is a totally different animal from income tax.