Taxes, at least in the United States of America, are everything that’s bad about taking a test plus the experience of being politely and nonconfrontationally mugged. You have to do it, and doing it correctly relies on a number of judgement calls on your part. There shouldn’t be an objectively right or wrong question that you are not given the answer to, but there is, and the I.R.S. will tell you, but only after you get it wrong. For example, people who do art as a business have to pay taxes if that business is a person. It’s even the same form a person submits, a 1040. It’s a schedule C, instead of the itemized schedule A or standard-deduction 1040-EZ. If you, making art, amounts to another person consuming resources and brining in cash regularly, then that person needs to pay taxes even if they are a only a convenient legal fiction. They get to deduct business expenses from canvases to rent on studio space, but they gotta pay taxes on their income.

Maybe you get out the watercolors when you’re feeling stressed and sell an 8 by 10 of the façade of a listing to a relator for a couple hundred dollars every month or so. Chances are that’s you doing it, not a business. I’m sure it’s not the only thing you’re painting and even though you’re making a few bucks it’d be a stretch to call it anything but a hobby. Another good indicator in deciding the business or hobby question is your behavior. Do you save receipts and have a separate bank account? Maybe a DBA or LLC for your own protection? It’s a business, even if it operates at a loss. Do you have a website and shoot a few local weddings on the cheap for friends of a friend? Chances are you got an LLC for liability, so yeah, still a business. Use social media to connect with followers who commission works including their original character and trade nausea for a few thousand extra bucks a month while still cashing your check from the gas station? Probably a hobby, seriously, especially if you stop doing it for weeks or months at a time because you’respending too much time crying in the shower. Do commissions as your sole form of income while spending hundreds of dollars a month on un-see juice? Probably a business even if you throw caution to the winds and don’t register a P.O. box at the UPS store to keep your personal life separate.