Originally Posted by TomCopeland:
Simple answer - Get Married!
Ok, assuming that won't happen, here's what you should do.
You must report all your business income on Schedule C, not directly onto Form 1040 as "extra income." If your profit on Schedule C is more than $400 you will owe Social Security tax, in addition to income tax.
Since none of the house bills are in your name, you can only deduct what you can prove you paid towards these expenses. You could try to reconstruct what happened. How much cash did you give your boyfriend each month? When during the month did you give it to him (look at the dates of the deposits)? Was their consistency in how much cash you gave him each month? Was it based on how much you made from parents? What was the money used for? Did your cash pay for half/fourth? of the house bills. Get a statement signed by your boyfriend saying that he took your cash and deposited it and then spent it on various house bills. Start tracking this carefully starting now (today!) going forward for 2015. If you don't have your taxes done until February, you'll have a month of good records that may help you remember what you did in 2014, or can be used as a way to estimate what you did in 2014.
The plan for legal marriage is in place, just waiting for a few finishing details to be fixed
So if I'm able to recreate what happened this year, I can claim those expenses for this year?
Thats easy enough since whenever I got cash, I just gave it to him to put into the checking account to pay for bills, which is what we did since my income was so miniscule for a while.