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How do you declare an interest free loan?
In principle, the US taxes both income and gifts. Simply thinking good thoughts is not necessarily sufficient to avoid filing or payment obligations. Giving somebody money with no repayment date, no interest, and no enforceable note looks an awful lot like either income or a gift. A loan normally has interest, money sitting in a savings account is insured, and other investments generally have an expected return.  Why would somebody give a loan with no interest, with only flexible or informal payment expectations, in a way where it has neither deposit insurance nor any expectation of net returns?  That looks a lot like a gift - at the very least, a gift of the time value and the default risk. The IRS definitely polices loan rates. The latest release is Revenue Ruling 2014-13. The AFR is useful for tax concepts such as Original Issue Discount (when issuers sell low-interest or no-interest bonds or loans at less than face value, attempting to recharacterize interest income as return of principal), various grantor trusts (e.g. GRATs), and so forth.  It's a simple way for the IRS to link to market rates of interest. Documentation and sufficient interest, as well as clear payment schedule (and maybe call or demand rights) make it a bona fide loan.  There is no real way for the IRS to distinguish between an informal arrangement and a post-hoc lie to conceal a gift.  Moreover, an undocumented loan is generally difficult to enforce, so it looks less like a true loan. The lender declares the interest payments as income on his Form 1040, line 8a and if necessary Schedule B.