<prompt> Human: Hello,from what I understand, if your income is below 10,400 then your income is considered to low to be taxed, correct?I looked over my 1099 work for postmates and made 10,440!!! 40 bucks to high!!!although I have an additional few thousand from other sources so my income would be approx 15k.My question is this, does the IRS considermy taxable income in this case to be 15k, or do they first look at reported expenses to see whether or not these expenses would drop your earned income below the 10,400 federal benchmark from the business milage claim, etc?  <response>: You are mistaken on the main point.That 10,400.00 threshold is for income tax only. As a 1099 self employed person you owe self employment taxes once you make over 400.00. You have to file, and will owe taxes, because you are self employed.You need to be careful when looking things up, since as a self employed person the rules are different then you.This is because if you were w2, your employer would have withheld fica taxes from your check, and would have matched those taxes. So the IRS gets what they are due. As a self employed person, its on you to remit those fica taxes.To the second question, you only owe fica or income taxes on your profits. So that is after all the business expenses are deducted on your schedule c tax form. 