E-bay sellers get a short break from the IRS

[Crusty Trucker]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/a-victory-for-common-sense-the-irs-has-stalled-a-new-tax-rule-that-would-have-triggered-a-tsunami-of-1099-ks-for-44-million-american-taxpayers-in-2023-are-you-off-the-hook/ar-AA1kxU5Y?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=bf6c000ce7d847f9856eae8603bc716f&ei=82

 

If you make a bit of extra money by selling goods or services online, you can breathe a little easier for the moment, now that the IRS has postponed a plan that would have set off a “tsunami of 1099-K” tax forms.

For the second year in a row, Uncle Sam delayed a new tax rule that will lower the income threshold for Form 1099-K, which is used to report third-party business payments to the IRS.

[JFranklin]

I never make any profit when selling on EPay. What with high fees and shipping nowadays!

[ted sweet]

still not legal to not report the sales

[PONTIAC1953]

Ebay seller don't get a break from Ebay, if a buyer doesn't believe you have sold him the right part, even though you know that you have, all the buyer has to do, is to tell ebay that "it doesn't fit", ebay then refunds the buyer, takes the money from you, and the buyer has the right part, that fits correctly, and he got it for free, I for one, am sick of ebay allowing seller to list everything everywhere on ebay, it should be set up, so that when you're searching for 1953 Pontiac parts, and you type in -fits or -for, that would limit your search results to actual parts or supplies that actually are for 1953 Pontiacs, not ford, not toyota, not 2023, but ebay doesn't care. they ruin a good thing a long time ago, too many sellers fees, I won't sell on there anymore.

[Douglas Gilmore Brown]

I agree that an eBay search for a 1953 Pontiac hubcap should not get dozens of other items, but that is more of eBay's algorithm, than the listers'. I search for a rare 1856 silver dollar, and ebay pukes out about a dozen different common dates. I've bought and sold on eBay since the late nineties. This is a recent development. I think it is AI in action.

 

I do have a few more serious beefs about eBay. Their sales commission is in line with those of auction companies, but then they also charge the same commission on postage. If you sell a $20 dollar brake drum that weighs 40 pounds to someone 3000 miles away, that can kill you.  Also, for decades the big catalogue houses like Sears and Wards lobbied against paying out of state sales taxes if the seller was not in that state. This was a solid Constitutional argument against states taxing interstate commerce. Now, if I sell something to a customer in a distant state like Hawaii, the customer there gets dinged on the sales tax. Sears was a better friend to me than Amazon and those places that sell groceries to people too lazy to go to a store.

 

The sales tax is not out of my pocket, but that extra cost to the customer will discourage a certain percentage of sales. There are about 40 states in the USA that I have never set foot in; if they are gouging their inhabitants 8 percent sales tax, that is enough for me to stay out of them.

 

I can count the number of customers who have intentionally stiffed me on one hand. Since the Post Office began tracking  packages, customer's claiming an item never arrived is about nil. One must take lots of pictures and have an accurate description to be safe. NEVER use words like new, mint, excellent, or other flashy adjectives to describe condition.

 

I live in a town of 750 people in the inland hills of Maine.  On eBay, I sell a lot of hand cranked record player parts, a few old car parts, old sporting goods, old coins, and books and magazines. I recently sold a cowl light from a 1930 Chrysler to a man in New Zealand, and a Trophy for the best chicken in the 1928 Orange County Calif. Fair. If I lived for another 100 years, I couldn't sell this sort of stuff where I live.   By the way, the New Zealand buyer remarked that we were 12,000 plus miles apart. If we were much further apart, we would be getting closer.

 

eBay does take time, and it is not for everybody. But, last spring when I picked a 1990's snowboard out a pile of roadside stuff set out for the local spring clean-up week, and got $350.00 for it from some cool dude in Colorado, I wasn't complaining about eBay fees. But it was a good deal for him, and he gave me a nice feedback. 

 

    On the other side of the coin, I use eBay to buy a lot of maintenance parts for my daily driver, which is s 1987 Volvo 240 wagon. Ignition parts, fuel pumps, brake calipers, gas tanks, and the infamous fuel pump relay. I usually get 2 of a given part; one for immediate use, and one for future replacement as needed.

    I am a longtime coin collector, and eBay is great way to build my collection, and also to weed out (sell) duplicates.

 

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Douglas Gilmore Brown (see edit history)

[JRA]

Thanks to eBay I could get many rare parts for my cars delivered in Brazil. The challenges of restoring cars back 30-40 years ago, outside US, were incredible. Internet and eBay are an amazing help for our hobby. Taxes may show up, at end governments are always seeking for more. As we need the parts, we may complain, but we will pay for them, anyway.