If you’re taking a vacation, you can rent your house out while you’re away. You can make money and have a housesitter all tax free.
The IRS allows you to rent your home up to 2 weeks without having to pay income taxes. This can be an ideal scenario if you’re concerned about leaving your house empty for 2 weeks. You can use an online service like AirBnB to find qualified people to rent your house.
If you live in a city where there is an event that comes to town that pretty much takes over the whole town, this can be fairly lucrative for you. For example, if you live in Austin and all the hotels are booked a year in advanced for the SXSW conference, you can charge a significant amount tax-free. During the week of The Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, it’s been reported that some homeowners have rented their houses out for the week for a whopping $25,000!
If you have more than one home you can rent each home out for 14 days. So with 3 houses, that’d be 42 days you’d be able to have non-taxed income.