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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

I never had a corporate CC, so I'm curious: do those rewards count as personal income for tax purposes?

Usually I'll let the points sit and use them when I have to travel - so the points never touch my bank accounts. I'm not a tax expert, but for that reason I don't bother reporting any income on it

If you use it for personal travel, I'm pretty sure it counts as income.

It does not in the US:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/a-02-18.pdf

I stand corrected, thanks

Credit card rewards do not get a 1099 as they’re a rebate/discount on spent monies.

Banking sign up bonuses usually do as they’re classified as interest.

Yeah, but the company spent the monies, and the employee got the rebate. Seems like an employment benefit to me.

Travel status/miles are sort of similar. It’s a basic racket: the airline rewards you for steering your company’s money to them. It seems to be broadly acceptable but I agree looks pretty sketchy when you boil it down to the basics.

No. CC points are not taxable if earned via spending - they're like rebates for spending so they are not taxed.

For the same kind of points (Chase Ultimate, for example), you are taxed if earned via:

* Referrals

* Opening an account (i.e. Chase checking account)

* Other non-spending activities

But if the business spends $100 and the rebate is $2, but I personally pocket the rebate instead of giving the money back to the business, wouldn't that $2 become taxable personal income? (and perhaps also theft, depending on my relationship to the business?)

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/a-02-18.pdf

Seems like only cash rewards are taxable, but even then, it doesn't see like the IRS would be interested in pursuing it.

If you run a small business and have a SB card, spending just $100k can get you more than $1k in rewards a year. $1k is still probably not worth the IRS tracking down, but getting on the IRS being too busy to tackle your tax fraud is still tax fraud.

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