I Churned $1,875 in Bank Bonuses. The IRS Kept $88.

Six banks, six bonuses, one spreadsheet with eight columns. It began August 9, 2025, a Saturday, me on the couch opening a Chase Total Checking account on my phone for $300, direct deposit required within 90 days, and it ended December 30 with a BMO bonus posting at 8:02 in the mornin'. Between those two dates I collected $1,875 from institutions that had never paid me a cent of interest in my life. Every requirement got met on time. The tax form is what taught me the actual rules of the game.

The spreadsheet ran: bank, bonus, direct deposit rule, minimum balance, fee trap, close-by date, status. Six rows filled over five months. My payroll dashboard on ADP lemme split net pay by percentage across six accounts, which is the entire unlock for every offer on the list, and it took 90 seconds per change. Without that split, churning is a second job with a boss. With it, the banks never see anything except a normal paycheck landing in a normal account.

The bonuses posted like clockwork. The tax form is the part that got me. Every dollar of those bonuses counts as interest to the IRS, reported on a 1099-INT, taxed at my marginal rate like wages, and the $400 PNC bonus carried an $88 federal bill I only knew to expect because Chase's $300 bonus taught me the lesson the year before. The January envelope is the real closing fee on this hobby. Nobody in the offer fine print mentions it.

the spreadsheet tab named banks

Version one had six columns and no tax column, which tells you how the first year went. Version two carries eight: bank, bonus, direct deposit rule, minimum balance, fee trap, close-by date, tax set-aside, status. The tax column did not exist. Now it populates the moment an offer hits the sheet, before I ever click apply. The version-one omission cost me a January of muttering, cuz the IRS heard about every dollar of every bonus from six banks before I heard anything from anybody.

six accounts, six direct deposits

The board, as played. Chase $300 for one direct deposit of any size within 90 days. PNC $400 for $5,000 of direct deposits inside 60 days. Huntington $300 for one qualifying deposit a month across three months. Fifth Third $325 for two deposits of $500 or more. KeyBank $250 for a single $500 deposit plus an open debit card? No card swipe needed, just the deposit. BMO $300 for $500 a month over two months. Terms drift from bank to bank and year to year, which is why the rule column exists and why every line gets re-verified by phone before a dollar moves.

adp and the 40-20-20 split

The routing went 40 percent Chase, 20 PNC, 20 Huntington, 10 Fifth Third, 5 KeyBank, 5 BMO, adjusted as each requirement cleared. My HR department never blinked. One payroll rep asked if everything was okay at home, which I took as a compliment to the plan. One gotcha matters: PNC counted only direct deposits through the ACH system, and payroll qualifies where person-to-person app pushes do not, a distinction the fine print buries and the spreadsheet flags in red.

day 59 of 60

PNC wanted $5,000 in 60 days and my net pay could not carry that percentage for two straight cycles without starving the other five accounts and missing a different bank's requirement entirely. So I ran 100 percent into PNC for exactly two pay cycles in October, $2,610 and $2,640, posted day 31 and day 59. Day 59. The second deposit cleared the requirement with one day of margin, and I set three calendar alarms for that account in a single afternoon. The $400 bonus posted December 12. I have never been paid so well for watching a number land.

$1,500 parked at huntington, doing nothing

Huntington waives its $12 monthly fee at a $1,500 minimum balance, so $1,500 of my money sat in a 0.01 percent account for three months as an admission ticket. At 4.25 percent in my Ally account that same $1,500 would have earned about $16 across the quarter. It earned 45 cents where it was. The fee waived itself and cost me sixteen dollars anyways, which is the honest math on every minimum balance requirement in every offer on the board.

the january envelope of 1099s

Six 1099-INTs arrived between January 14 and February 2, one per bank, each listing its bonus in box 1 as interest. $300, $400, $300, $325, $250, $300. The envelope held $1,875 total, printed by six different institutions that never coordinated on anything except making sure Washington heard about every single dollar before I ever did. The envelope went into the tax folder with the W-2, and the tax prep software handled it in one screen. The screen asked nothin'. It already had every number.

the 1099-int line nobody expects

At a 22 percent marginal rate, the math is short. The $300s owe $66 each. The $400 owed $88. That $88 is the number I now set aside the day a bonus lands, and it is the line every bonus-chasing thread on the internet discovers one January too late. Bank bonuses are interest income, not rebates and not thank-you notes. The state form wanted its slight cut too. Kept across the whole run: $1,787 of the $1,875, which is 95.3 percent, and knowing that percentage in advance would have saved me a January of muttering.

closing before the $12 fee

Every row in the spreadsheet carries a close-by date, cuz the back-end fee is where banks get their money back. KeyBank closed February 28 inside its window. BMO closed March 15, two weeks before a $10 inactivity fee would have woken up. PNC closed April 9 after the bonus cleared plus one patience week. Chase and Huntington stay open, one for the ATM next to the YMCA and one cuz closing an account inside six months can claw back the bonus in some states of fine print. Two accounts survived the experiment on purpose.

what seven months actually paid

Final scoreboard, August through December: $1,875 gross. $88 to the IRS at filing. $1,787 kept. Hours spent, counting portal logins, routing changes, and two branch visits for Fifth Third signature cards: eleven, give or take, spread across a season of Sunday afternoons that would otherwise have gone to laundry. $1,787 for eleven hours beats my actual hourly rate at the day job, and I have decided not to think too hard about that. The minimum balances, the day-59 margins, and the January envelope are the real price list, and the spreadsheet prices all three now.

the tab for 2026

The 2026 tab lives in the same file, same eight columns, two rows marked pending, tax set-aside column populated before anything else, which is the whole lesson of the January envelope stated as a spreadsheet habit. Seven months, six banks, $1,875 gross, $88 to the IRS, $1,787 net, and a January envelope I now budget for every December. The couch is where the next row gets opened. That is the whole side job.