Passive Income

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James Chen
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James Chen, CMT is an expert trader, investment adviser, and global market strategist. He has authored books on technical analysis and foreign exchange trading published by John Wiley and Sons and served as a guest expert on CNBC, BloombergTV, Forbes, and Reuters among other financial media.

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Updated January 17, 2022
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Gordon Scott
Reviewed by Gordon Scott
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Gordon Scott has been an active investor and technical analyst of securities, futures, forex, and penny stocks for 20+ years. He is a member of the Investopedia Financial Review Board and the co-author of Investing to Win. Gordon is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT). He is also a member of CMT Association.
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Katrina Avila Munichiello
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Katrina Ávila Munichiello is an experienced editor, writer, fact-checker, and proofreader with more than fourteen years of experience working with print and online publications. In 2011, she became editor of World Tea News, a weekly newsletter for the U.S. tea trade. In 2013, she was hired as senior editor to assist in the transformation of Tea Magazine from a small quarterly publication to a nationally distributed monthly magazine. Katrina also served as a copy editor at Cloth, Paper, Scissors and as a proofreader for Applewood Books. Since 2015 she has worked as a fact-checker for America's Test Kitchen's Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines. She has published articles in The Boston Globe, Yankee Magazine, and more. In 2011, she published her first book, A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time (Tuttle). Before working as an editor, she earned a Master of Public Health degree in health services and worked in non-profit administration.
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What Is Passive Income?

Passive income is earnings derived from a rental property, limited partnership, or other enterprise in which a person is not actively involved. As with active income, passive income is usually taxable, but it is often treated differently by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Key Takeaways

  • Passive income is earnings from a rental property, limited partnership, or other business in which a person is not actively involved.
  • The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has specific rules for what it calls material participation, which determine whether a taxpayer has actively participated in business, rental, or other income-producing activity.
  • A taxpayer can claim a passive loss against income generated from passive activities.
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Passive Income

Understanding Passive Income

There are three main categories of income: active income, passive income, and portfolio income. Passive incomes include earnings from a rental property, limited partnership, or other business in which a person is not actively involved—a silent investor, for example.

Proponents of earning passive income tend to be boosters of a work-from-home and be-your-own-boss professional lifestyle. Passive income has been a relatively loosely used term in recent years. Colloquially, it’s been used to define money being earned regularly with little or no effort on the part of the person receiving it.

Passive income, when used as a technical term, is defined by the IRS as either “net rental income” or “income from a business in which the taxpayer does not materially participate,” and in some cases can include self-charged interest.

Portfolio income is considered passive income by some analysts. However, the IRS does not always agree that income from dividends, interest, and so forth is passive, so it’s wise to check with a tax professional on that subject.


Types of Passive Income

Passive income includes self-charged interest, rental properties, and businesses in which the person receiving income does not materially participate. There are specific IRS rules that need to be followed for income to be considered passive.

Self-charged interest

When money is loaned to a partnership or an S corporation acting as a pass-through entity (essentially, a business designed to reduce the effects of double taxation) by that entity’s owner, the interest income on that loan to the portfolio income can qualify as passive income. “Certain self-charged interest income or deductions may be treated as passive activity gross income or passive activity deductions if the loan proceeds are used in a passive activity,” the IRS states.

Rental properties

Rental properties are defined as passive income with a couple of exceptions. If you’re a real estate professional, any rental income that you’re making counts as active income. If you’re “self-renting,” meaning that you own a space and are renting it out to a corporation or partnership where you conduct business, that does not constitute passive income—unless that lease had been signed before 1988, in which case you’ve been exempted into having that income defined as passive.

Income from leasing land does not qualify as passive income, either. However, a landowner can benefit from passive income loss rules if the property nets a loss during the tax year.

If you hold land for investment, any earnings would be considered active.

‘No material participation’ in a business

If you put $500,000 into a candy store with the agreement that the owners would pay you a percentage of earnings, that would be considered passive income as long as you do not participate in the operation of the business in any meaningful way other than making the investment. If you helped in managing the company with the owners, then your income could be seen as active, because you provided “material participation.”

The IRS has standards for material participation. The following are all considered examples of material participation:

  • If you’ve dedicated more than 500 hours to a business or activity from which you’re profiting
  • If your participation in an activity has been “substantially all” of the participation for that tax year
  • If you’ve participated up to 100 hours and that is at least as much as any other person involved in the activity

Special Considerations

When you record a loss on a passive activity, only passive activity profits can have their deductions offset as opposed to the income as a whole. It would be prudent to ensure that all your passive activities were classified that way, to make the most of the tax deduction. These deductions are allocated for the next tax year and are applied in a reasonable manner that takes into account the next year’s earnings or losses.

To save time and effort, you can group two or more passive activities into one larger activity, provided that you form an “appropriate economic unit,” according to the IRS. When you do this, instead of having to provide material participation in multiple activities, you only have to provide it for the activity as a whole. In addition, if you include multiple activities in one group and have to dispose of one of those activities, you’ve only done away with part of a larger activity as opposed to all of a smaller one.

The organizing principle behind this grouping is relatively simple: if the activities are located in the same geographic area; if the activities have similarities in the types of business; or if the activities are somehow interdependent—for instance, if they have the same customers, employees, or use a single set of books for accounting.

For example, if you owned a pretzel store and a sneaker store located in malls in both Monterey, Calif., and Amarillo, Texas, you would have four options for how to group their passive income:

  • Grouped into one activity (both businesses were in shopping malls)
  • Grouped by geography (Monterey and Amarillo)
  • Grouped by type of business (retail sales of pretzels and shoes)
  • Or they could remain ungrouped 

What are examples of passive income?

Passive income consists of money and losses generated from an enterprise in which a person is not actively involved. Examples include property rental (provided real estate isn’t your line of work), equipment leasing, and limited partnership interest.

Is investment income considered passive income?

Passive income is frequently defined, somewhat loosely, as earnings derived from activities that don’t require active participation. However, interest, dividends, and capital gains—investment earnings that generally don’t require much active participation to obtain—are not classified by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as passive income. Instead, they fall under the category of portfolio income.

Is passive income taxable?

Yes, the IRS does collect taxes on passive income. Often, this type of income is taxed at the same rate as salaries received from a job, although it is sometimes possible to use deductions to reduce the liability. For guidance on how to limit your tax obligations, it may be wise to speak to a tax professional, who can advise you on how to capitalize on your specific circumstances.

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  1. Internal Revenue Service. “Publication 925, Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules.” Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  2. Internal Revenue Service. “Passive Activity Loss Audit Technique Guide (ATG),” Pages 1-1 and 1-2. Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  3. Internal Revenue Service. “Publication 925, Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules.” Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  4. Corporate Finance Institute. “Passive Income.” Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  5. Internal Revenue Service. “Passive Activity Loss Audit Technique Guide (ATG),” Page 3-1. Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  6. Internal Revenue Service. “Publication 925: Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules,” Page 6. Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  7. Internal Revenue Service. “Publication 925: Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules,” Pages 3 and 11. Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  8. Internal Revenue Service. “Publication 925: Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules,” Page 5. Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  9. Internal Revenue Service. “Topic No. 425 Passive Activities — Losses and Credits.” Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

  10. Internal Revenue Service. “Publication 925: Passive Activity and At-Risk Rules,” Page 8. Accessed Jan. 17, 2022.

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