New tax on online sales

[kloveland]

The current administration now wants to tax any amount over $600 that transfers through PayPal, eBay, FB marketplace, Venmo etc. so that means if you sell a vacuum over $600 you will be taxed on that amount. The info on $600 in your account is automatically sent to the IRS.

I received an email from eBay about this a couple months ago. Personally I don’t think it’s worth it to sell on eBay because of the additional tax. I look at the sellers fees as the tax and now it’s just another layer added on top of it.

It may also be $600 of total sales. I don’t know how many collectors pay attention to current laws. So I thought I would share this. I’m not happy over this new law. So essentially we are working for the government when we sell online so they can tax the crap out of us.

 

[repairman]

Hehe

Found that out the hard way when my accountant said I made X amount of money selling stuff on eBay and I'm thinking to myself, "how did they know that". For some reason, I was collecting the sales tax before eBay transitioned away from Paypal and then eBay would deduct it for eBay fees. Now eBay does everything by direct deposit. Might as well reach your $600 limit and then sell on other sites like Mercari, Offerup, etc. because I think it's $600 per vendor if I'm not mistaken.

 

[huskyvacs]

This happened in October or November of last year with the covid relief bill that was passed, This law was hidden inside the bill and nobody did anything about it.

The $600 selling limit is the limit you can sell for the entire year before paypal sends a 1099-K to the IRS and wants you to explain where the money came from. This is a federal law on a nationwide level so there is no way to avoid it by running to other sites. They all have to be held by the same laws. The only thing you can do is set up a flea market booth and sell there and do cash only sales.

eBay is petitioning to the government to raise the law back to $2,000 but they likely won't.

If you are selling used items for less than what you paid new you are taking a loss and it is not taxable anyway so this is just adding more and more useless junk for the IRS to try and make sense of and it does nothing but confuse the public.

All you can do is print out your eBay sales records from your My eBay page and take it to a tax accountant for advice on what you should do about it. Most of the time you don't have to do anything about it and just send in a form of "$0"

 

[kloveland]

Huskyvacs, thank you for explaining. I’m hesitant to sell on eBay now. Hopefully with the change of admin the $2,000 limit will come back. I’m wondering how the IRS will enforce this since they are already behind as is.

 

[huskyvacs]

Yeah this screwed up my eBay plans too. I will have to set my own limit at $500 and stop when it gets there and then wait until next year to sell more. My plan though is that once I get a job I will have to file taxes anyway so it won't matter then - just for now I have to make sure I stay under $600.

You just file it as part of your taxes like normal - most of the time you will likely owe nothing because you are selling things at a loss.

If you do not make enough income pay taxes (under $12,000 for my state) then I do not know what it entails.

Again, ask a local accountant, in person for a more conscisive answer.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Yeah I've had sales tax on stuff I've bought on eBay for a while now. It used to be that tax would typically only be charged if the seller's location was in the same state as the buyer in some cases, but now it's every transaction whether they are in your state or run a business or not.

 

[royalsuper]

same thing in France with a limit of 3000 euro (3 144,59 Dollar)

 

[madman]

Taxation is theft.

Maybe consider voting for people who won't do this kind of thing?

 

[huskyvacs]

That would imply voting actually made a difference to anything.