Expenses for income earned through the Sharing Economy

Thousands of people earn money by selling their goods and services through the Sharing Economy – for example renting out a room on Airbnb, delivering food with Deliveroo and renting out a spare car parking space.

However, income earned through the Sharing Economy – even if it is not your primary source of income – is taxable and you must declare it to Revenue.

In the course of operating your Sharing Economy business, it is likely you incurred numerous business expenses and many of these can be deducted from your gross income to reduce your overall liability.

General examples of qualifying expenses are:

• fees and charges associated with signing up to advertise your services on a website
• legal and accounting fees
• costs for the supply of necessary equipment

It's important to note that you can only expense costs which have wholly and exclusively occurred for the purposes of the trade. You can't include costs which occurred during personal use.

For example, Michael uses his bike exclusively to deliver food with Deliveroo at weekends. He also uses the bike for personal reasons during the week. Michael is entitled to claim 2/7s of the costs associated with maintaining his bicycle. In other words, Michael is claiming for the two days of the week where the bike was used for business. So if his total maintenance costs are €100, he can expense €28.57.

Similarly, Phil advertises his part-time gardening services on Adverts.ie. He uses his personal gardening tools while providing his services. Phil needs to keep a detailed record of the number of days he worked gardening during the year so he can calculate exactly how much he can expense if he needs to purchase new tools. If he works as a gardener for 100 days in a year and the cost of new tools is €500, he will be entitled to expense €136.98.

Phil can also expense costs associated with traveling to and from locations for gardening.

If you own a vehicle that's used for both business and personal purposes, you're entitled to claim a percentage of the actual running costs (fuel, repairs, servicing, etc.) which relate solely to trade use.

If you offer dog minding services, you can expense the costs associated with caring for the animal (such as food and bedding).

Meanwhile if you've developed a trade from renting dresses on Rentmydress.ie, you can expense any costs associated with cleaning the clothes when they're returned.