Originally Posted by
gooselee
If you occasionally sell some stuff on eBay, that would count as a business activity that you could theoretically want to separate on to a business credit card. It is a sole proprietorship with your SSN as Tax ID and that's about it.
I didn't know much about sole proprietorships, so I did a bit of research.
It seems like the main consequence of having a sole proprietorship is that you have to pay self-employment taxes on whatever the business earns (over and above regular income taxes, you have to pay both halves of social security and medicare. Also, some states have almost punitive self-employment taxes)
Telling Amex that you have a sole proprietorship for the purposes of obtaining credit, and then telling the IRS that you don't seems like a bad idea.