This is a niche question, but here goes: So here I am, old enough to collect some part of my Social Security pension (Gah! I can't be that old!!!), but not old enough to fully retire. That means that for every two dollars I earn over the set limit, the Gummint deducts a dollar from my SS deposit. The other day I got a form from the Social Security Administration, telling me to reconfirm my estimate of what I'm likely to make in 2017 and 2018, so they can make the correct--- ahem!--- adjustments. The money I'm likely to earn in wages, I can guesstimate well enough. But for self-employment, they want not only the income you expect to bring in, but also how many hours per month you'll work at it. I can reckon that, more or less, for the itinerant preaching service I provide, though how many times a year I'll get called to do it, the Lord only knows. But what am I supposed to tell them about my writing? I'm doing it as a business, even though I haven't made a nickel off of it yet. The Feds know I own this business; I filed a tax return this year reporting my 2016 expenses for it. But how do I know how much time I'll be able to spend on book production this year and next? And why do they want to know? Do they think an SE hour worked equals an hour that can be billed? (They don't know the writing biz.) If I tell them, yes, yes, I'm going to spend 100 hours a month virtuously writing, will I screw myself out of SS income? Is anybody else here in the same position? When you got your questionnaire, how did you fill out Question 3?
