Do You Tithe on Bonuses, Business Income, and Other Irregular Money?
A bonus lands in your account and the first question is not “how much do I owe the IRS.” It’s “do I owe God ten percent of this.”
Here’s the rule, and it covers every kind of irregular money you’ll ever ask about: the tithe applies to increase. Increase means new income that comes to you and becomes yours to keep. If it’s increase, tithe it. If it isn’t, don’t.
A bonus is increase. Tithe it. A loan is not increase. You owe it back, so don’t tithe it. Everything else in this article is that same test applied to a different situation.
Bonuses and Windfalls
A bonus is the easiest case in this whole article. It’s money your employer gave you, on top of your regular pay, because of performance or profit or a good year. It’s yours now. It’s increase.
Tithe on the full bonus, the same percentage you tithe on your regular paycheck. If you tithe ten percent of gross, tithe ten percent of the gross bonus before taxes come out. The same logic covers a work bonus, a signing bonus, a commission spike, a year-end profit share, or a one-time award. None of it is different in kind from your salary. It’s just less predictable in timing.
Some people treat irregular income differently than regular income, like the tithe only applies to the “real” paycheck. Scripture doesn’t make that distinction. Proverbs 3:9 says to honor the Lord “with the firstfruits of all your crops” - all your increase, not just the predictable kind.
Business Owners and the Self-Employed
This is where we get the most questions, and it’s the one worth slowing down on.
If you own a business, you do not tithe on gross revenue. You tithe on profit - your draw, your distribution, whatever you actually take home as your own money.
Here’s why that matters. Say your business brings in $40,000 in a month. Out of that, $15,000 goes to inventory, $12,000 goes to payroll, $5,000 goes to rent and overhead, and you take home $8,000. Your revenue was $40,000. Your increase was $8,000. The $32,000 that went to suppliers and employees and your landlord was never yours. It passed through your hands on its way to someone else. You can’t tithe on money you never owned.
This is the same principle Proverbs 3:9 is describing when it says firstfruits of your “crops.” A farmer doesn’t tithe on the whole field. He tithes on the harvest - what the field actually produced after the seed and the labor and the cost of getting it to market. Your business is your field. Your profit is your harvest. Tithe on the harvest.
Practically, that means:
Track your draw or distribution, not your invoices. If you pay yourself a regular salary from the business, tithe on that salary as it hits your personal account. If you take irregular distributions, tithe on each distribution when you take it, or settle up on your total draw at the end of the year if your cash flow is uneven month to month.
Don’t tithe twice on the same dollar. If you already tithed on a distribution when you took it, don’t tithe on it again when it shows up on your K-1 or your year-end profit statement. Pick one point in the cycle and be consistent.
One question we’ll leave open: whether you subtract self-employment tax and retirement contributions before you tithe. That’s the gross vs net question wearing a business owner’s clothes, and the same principle applies. Firstfruits points to tithing before taxes come out. Decide once, be consistent, and don’t let the accounting become an excuse to shrink the number.
Side Hustles
Same rule, smaller scale. If you drive for a rideshare app on weekends, sell things you make, freelance on the side, or run any kind of side income alongside a regular job, tithe on what you actually keep after the direct costs of doing the work.
Gas, materials, platform fees, and the tools you had to buy to do the job aren’t your increase. What’s left after those costs is. If your side hustle nets you $400 in a month after expenses, that $400 is what you tithe on, not the $600 you grossed before costs.
Social Security
This one deserves an honest answer, not a tidy one.
If you tithed on your gross income throughout your working life, you already tithed on the money that funded your Social Security benefit. In that sense, the principal isn’t new income. You gave on it once already, years ago, before it ever went into the system.
But your benefit isn’t just your own contributions coming back to you. It includes growth, and in most cases it includes more than you and your employer put in, funded through the wider system rather than a dollar-for-dollar return of your money. That growth portion looks a lot like increase.
The common teaching we’d point you to: tithe on the growth, or give as conviction leads once you’re receiving benefits, rather than either ignoring the check entirely or tithing on the full amount as if it were brand new income. There’s no verse that settles this precisely, and we’d rather tell you that than pretend there is. Sit with your pastor and your own conscience on the exact number. What matters more than the math is that you don’t quietly stop giving once the paycheck becomes a benefit check.
Gifts and Inheritance
Yes, tithe on these. A gift someone hands you, or money you receive from an inheritance, is increase. It came to you and it’s now yours. The source doesn’t change what it is.
We know this one feels different, especially with an inheritance that carries grief along with it. But the test hasn’t changed - is this new money that’s now yours? Then bring the firstfruits of it, the same as you would any other increase.
Loans
No. A loan is not increase, and you should not tithe on it.
When you take out a loan, whether it’s a mortgage, a car loan, a business line of credit, or money borrowed from a family member, that money isn’t yours. You owe it back, usually with interest. It passes through your hands and it’s already spoken for. There’s no increase to tithe on, because nothing was added to what belongs to you. You took on debt, not income.
This is worth stating plainly because we’ve had people ask, half-joking, whether a big loan “counts” as a blessing they should tithe on. It doesn’t. Save your giving for the money that’s actually yours.
Tax Refunds, Briefly
A tax refund isn’t new income either, in most cases. It’s your own paycheck money that the government withheld and is returning to you, and if you tithed on gross income through the year, you already tithed on it. We’ve written a full breakdown, including the real exceptions, in Should I Tithe on My Tax Return?.
Investment Gains
Worth a short word here too. If you sell an investment for more than you put into it, the gain is increase. The principal you originally invested isn’t - you likely already tithed on that money when you first earned it - but the growth on top of it is new. Tithe on the gain when you realize it.
The Test That Covers All of It
Every category above reduces to the same question: did this become new money that’s mine to keep, or did it pass through me on its way somewhere else, or come back to me as something I already owned?
New and mine: tithe it. A bonus, business profit, a side hustle’s net, a gift, an inheritance, investment gains, the growth portion of Social Security.
Not new, or not mine: don’t tithe it. A loan, the principal you already tithed on, money moving through your business to suppliers and staff.
If you’re still working out the mechanics of gross versus net, or want the foundational case for tithing before applying it to a specific paycheck, start with How to Calculate Your Tithe and Gross vs Net Tithing. And if you want a full breakdown of how much of your income the tithe actually covers, read How Much Should I Tithe?.
Use the Tithe Calculator to run the numbers on any bonus, distribution, or irregular payment you’ve received. Firstfruits, on whatever the increase is. Trust God with the rest.