brought to you by the every dollar app start budgeting for free today today's question comes from

chad and south carolina he says i work full time and i have a lawn care business on the side part of my

business income was paid in cash and partly by payment apps like venmo etc i've been paying taxes on

everything except the cash and I was wondering morally and

legally how I should handle that income. Obviously, I already pay a lot of taxes, and I'm trying to

save money where I can. Should I feel bad about this? And if so, should I clear everything up with the

IRS and pay back what's due to them? You can decide if you want to go back or not and deal with it and how far back you want to

go, but income in America, regardless of how it's received, is taxed.

That's the law.

And so it is a moral and ethical thing to pay taxes on money you receive as cash, period.

And I pay taxes.

I mean, if we get paid in cash for something here, it all goes into the revenue,

and it all goes into the calculation, and we pay taxes on it,

just like we do everything else.

So mechanically, how you can do it is when you get paid in cash,

just deposited into the business bank account,

and then it'll be reflected there as income, and that'll help you do the totals and figure out

what you're supposed to do with your quarterly estimates on your business. That's the mechanics of it.

So, Chad, one of the things I read several years ago that really leans into this, George, as far as I'm concerned, is Tom Stanley, the great Tom Stanley, who did the original book, The Millionaire Next Door.

He and I became friends before he passed away.

His daughter, Sarah, we interact with her now.

She still does research on millionaires and billionaires and so forth.

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