I hate to revive old threads but found this with while searching tax information
This is extremely incorrect. Income is reported as a cumulative total of your income. It isn't reporting per independent source of income. So if I make $20,000/year at McDonald's, $3,000/year with AdSense and $100 with some sort of CPA, my total taxable income is $23,0001. You are taxed based on the $23k. Not based on making over $6k per source.
This is obviously different if you are filing as an LLC or some sort of corporation, but as a sole proprietor, you have to claim all of the income cumulatively. The way to offset it is to have business expenses. Web hosting, domain names, advertising (Google AdWords) or software (bots) which will bring your total taxable income (AGI) down which means you pay less tax. Here's the thing though, if you offset your income with your expenses and they equal $0 then why the heck are you even doing it? You're breaking even for all of your work and no business keeps running simply breaking even every year.
Now, if you're 15 years old (or older) and don't have a job and all of the money you make is from your IM campaigns, then file your taxes. Especially if it is less than the poverty level ($6k?) because then you won't have to pay taxes and could even possibly claim the earned income tax credit and get some money back from the government even though you didn't pay in. Everything being inside the U.S.
