There is no guarantee in life except higher taxes and death, I use to hear my dad say back when I was a young adult. The older I get his conclusions have become more prevalent and intertwined with mine. Gee, that is scary! I am sounding more and more like my dad everyday.

In today's economy there has to be more incoming money than outgoing, just to survive. Years ago the typical bread-winner was the man of the house. He would go to work everyday while the wife stayed home to nurture and raise the children. Life was good. Then World War II started. Our way of life was changed forever. Today, Most families must consist of a two-income set of wage earners to make enough money to pay all the bills. With the raging rise of fuel and energy costs, this trickle-down economics gives birth to higher costs of everything, from utilities to the food we eat. Businesses are trying to operate more efficiently, which even puts our jobs at risks. Massive layoffs in nearly all sectors of business are becoming more prevalent.

If you were to fall victim of your company downsizing, and lose your job, what would you do? If that one stream of income was to finally run dry, how would you pay your bills? As you can see from this small but possible example, how important it is to have multiple streams of income rolling in. In case of one or more streams vanishing, you can still maintain your lifestyle because you have other streams of income.

You could get another part-time job, but that in itself isn't going to help much. Taxes on your second income will eat up a lot of that extra money. Assuming you are in physically good condition and health, does working another job for someone else sound really exciting? Probably not. That is why having your own part-time business you work from home is so much more rewarding. Let us look at some of the many benefits of operating a home-based business.

1.  Any and all profit you make is yours to keep. Other than the 4% to 9% you must pay to the state on sales taxes, depending on where you live, the rest is yours.
2. A percentage of your home mortgage and Home Insurance is tax deductible. Just like your employer, he gets to claim his rent/mortgage as a business expense.
3. A percentage of your utility bills, that is gas, electric, water, sewage and garbage pickup are tax deductible.
4. If your home-based business in over the Internet, your Internet fees and costs are all tax deductible, and if sales are not in your home state, then you don't pay any state sales tax!
5. Your telephone if used as a business phone, then the percentage your phone is used for business the telephone costs are also tax deductible.
6. Driving to the post office to retrieve your business mail, the mileage you drive is tax deductible. Also expenses like paper, stamps, envelopes, staples, printer ink and toner, are all tax deductible.
7. Fees that you pay for memberships, handling fees, etc, like eBay, Yahoo, Paypal, and Amazon are all tax deductible.
8. I could go on and on about the tax advantages of operating a home-based business. I just touched on some of the many tax advantages that are fully authorized by the IRS and the Federal Government. Any expense that you incur in order to pursue a profit is considered a tax deduction.

With the Internet, a new era of living was born! First there was just information that you could acquire from the Internet. Then there was E-mail, which allowed you to stay in touch with friends, family and co-workers around the globe. Then you could go shopping on the Internet. No more mail order catalogs necessary. Life again was good. But how can someone capitalize on this new era of technology?

Today you do not have to be a computer geek to understand how to maintain, operate and function with a computer. You don't have to be a programmer of computer software to reap the benefits of having these programs installed on your home computer. If you can send an E-mail, then you already have the capability of utilizing the Internet for profit.

Dropshipping is one avenue that can make you a nice income. Affiliate marketing is another avenue that pays handsomely. Creating your own information products and selling through the Internet can actually make you more money than your day job. There are so many ventures you can do to achieve multiple streams of income today. I haven't even begun to touch on the literally hundreds of home-based businesses that you can create.

In my next Series of Multiple Streams of Income (Part Two) I will show you the top twenty-five home-based businesses you can operate from home, most of them as part-time, to get the streams of income flowing. Then I will give you some examples of some people on how they started and what they are earning now.