That’s a tough call. There’s a series of questions the IRS has that you can use to decide if it’s a hobby or a business… but even if you go full business mode after 3 years of not making a profit it’s automatically classified as a hobby. So let’s say you really don’t want a business but you want to be able to claim some expenses to offset the giftcards, would the sweet spot be to claim enough of the expenses so that you still showed a small profit and you could keep the business classification?
Right now the tax for me would be tiny on the cards I’ve earned but I can see where the people who are doing really well would need a strategy.
I think I’m supposed to add I’m not a tax professional or expert and my experience is just paying tax and Google lol.