Originally Posted by
rct12345
I think the primary question here is how does IRS define a business. From their guideline for Schedule C:
"An activity qualifies as a business if your primary purpose for engaging in the activity is for income or profit and you are involved in the activity with continuity and regularity."
Source:
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040sc
If this ticket was a one or few times thing it can be explained away as a favor for a friend but (referring to the latter part in the quote above) if done on a regular basis then it would be a business.
The quotation from the IRS Guidelines is quite helpful. It is key that there are two criteria, joined by the conjunction “AND”. That means that BOTH criteria must be satisfied before the IRS will find that a business exists:
(1) The activity is “for income or profit,” AND
(2) The activity is done on a regular basis.
We have already established (and the OP agrees) that there is no net income or profit, nor any desire for income or profit. Therefore, the OP’s ticket purchases fail to satisfy the first criterion, rendering the second criteriion moot.
(if the second criterion were the sole test, then every FTer who buys Visa gift cards every week would be a business, as I have pointed out previously.)
Repeatedly in this thread (posts 7, 19, and 24), I have posited several detailed scenarios that appear to be indistinguishable from the OP’s situation (buying gift cards, restaurant meals, concert tickets, etc.). I am still waiting for my chief critic to distinguish these scenarios. The silence is quite telling —— they cannot be distinguished.
The OP is not conducting a business, filing a Schedule C will not make a penny difference in his/her taxes, and the IRS doesn’t care.