So, you have been uploading videos, it’s been this thing you do in your spare time, and you have managed to hit the monetization mark. Now people are sending you gifts to advertise… well there is a good chance you need to be telling the Inland Revenue Department (IRD).
There are different factors that the IRD will look at, these are looked at together to test if an income has been derived.
Income can be described as comprising three features:1
- Income is something that comes in.
- Income imports the notions of periodicity, recurrence and regularity.
- Whether a particular receipt is income depends upon its quality in the hands of the recipient.
We can look at those features as follows,
Generally, once you earn over $200 from an activity, the IRD sees this as an income source. This value changes if you are under 18 and are at school to $2,340.
Next, they will look at how regular the payments are. There may be cases where this is a one off, but if you have multiple videos that are making money, this will quickly become regular.
The IRD also tends to look at intention, if you had any intention to make money from this activity? This could come in the form or the number of hours you are spending on this activity, the volume of videos and photos you are uploading or if you decide to switch the activity to monetization.
If any of this sounds like you, then you should think about talking to us today, we can listen to your situation and advise if you should be declaring your funds from content creation activities.