Know the Difference: Active Income vs. Passive Income (2024)

FAQs

Know the Difference: Active Income vs. Passive Income? ›

Active income, generally speaking, is generated from tasks linked to your job or career that take up time. Passive income, on the other hand, is income that you can earn with relatively minimal effort, such as renting out a property or earning money from a business without much active participation.

Active income is income you generate through activities such as working, running a business, or providing services. Passive income is income generated by something that you own or have invested in such as savings accounts, real estate, stocks, or rights to something you have created.

Active income is money earned through work, such as a salary, self-employment income or commissions. It requires direct involvement in providing services or labor. Jobs or careers that generally generate active income include doctors, engineers, teachers, salespersons and graphic designers.

Your job earns active income in the form of a salary, hourly wage, tips, and commissions. Active income means you are performing tasks related to your job or career and getting paid for it. Active income takes up your time. Passive income allows you to earn money with minimal effort.

Passive income is a type of regular income earned without working for an employer or job. It doesn't require any active work where you're receiving money in exchange for a service performed. Another way to think about passive income vs. active income is as rent vs. wages.

In active voice sentences the subject does the action. Example: Liz played the piano. In passive voice sentences the subject receives the action. Example: The piano was played by Liz.

Passive income can also include royalties from a book you write, an online course you create, or the rent you receive from your real estate properties. When you have passive income, you're no longer solely dependent on your active income to cover for your living expenses.

Passive income is earnings from a rental property, limited partnership, or other enterprise in which a person is not actively involved. A passive loss is a financial loss within an investment in any trade or business enterprise in which the investor is not a material participant.

Is rental income active or passive? ›

The IRS considers a rental activity to be passive if real estate is used by tenants and rental income (or expected rental income) is received mainly for the use of the property. In other words, owning a rental property and collecting rental income is considered passive and not active in most cases.

Passive income is revenue that takes negligible effort to acquire. It includes earnings from rental properties, limited partnerships, and other projects where you're not involved in the continued generation of earnings.

Passive activity loss rules are a set of tax regulations that prohibit taxpayers from using passive losses to offset earned or ordinary income. The regulations prevent investors from using losses incurred from income-producing activities in which they are not materially involved.

Passive income is money that you don't have to actively work for; it comes in from something that already exists and continues to work for you. While active income is earned by working a job or owning a business, passive income is earned without having to work too much for it on an ongoing basis.

Active investing seeks to outperform – or “beat” – the benchmark index, while passive investing seeks to track the benchmark index. Active investing is favored by those who seek to mitigate extreme downside risk, while passive investing is often used by investors with a long-term horizon.

Passive income is named as such because it doesn't require any regular action on your part; once you have the stream established, it can mostly be set and forgotten. Generally speaking, passive income is taxed the same as active income.