Re: obviously, you people are not officials..

Just a thought here...

The entire issue here is the respect for the tax system. You are absolutely correct in stating that if you declare the income, you are then entitled to the appropriate deductions. Heck, you can even create a loss for yourself if you use all of the expense deductions available to you. You can write off a percentage of your home space for use as an office, including all utilities, taxes, mortgage interest, computer, cell phone usage etc.. You can claim all the things that you mentioned. You can pay a lower income person in your house to do your bookkeeping for you. There is no doubt that you can bring your income down to zero and walk away with the exact amount of money that you would have if you didn't declare or perhaps even more through a tax loss. Two questions come to mind.

1) If there is no out of pocket loss to you doing it the proper way, why aren't you doing it the proper way? Is it laziness?
2) If there is no out of pocket loss to you doing it the proper way, why do you feel that your services are now worth more and that you can charge more? Is it greed? Are you going to take advantage of a situation to charge more just for the heck of it? Are you only reffing for the Mmoney?

Food for thought.