Tax Question

All,

I may need to take this up with a CPA but was wondering if any of you could chime in. I’m considering selling off a significant portion of my collection which would result in possibly receiving a 1099-k from Paypal.

My question is: If I’m not registered as a business but receive that form, can I still deduct expenses on the Sch. C of my tax return? Expenses being COGS, eBay fees, Paypal fees, Shipping, etc. Or, do I have to pay taxes on the gross sales figure since I’m not a business.

I really don’t know much about tax law… Just have been browsing the internet.

Thank you for any help!

You should be able to write off most of that, and maybe all of it, but you need to speak to a local professional that is going to know the nuances of the taxes in your city/town/county/state/commonwealth/township/whatever other tax entity is in your pockets.

There are variations at the local level. The federal level is not the hardest one to comply with in most cases.

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@funmonkey54 - Thank you Charlie. I was thinking the same thing, just wanted to see the general consensus among those who do sell consistently.

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Yes, any expenses associated with selling the card are deductible on schedule C. This would include, the cost of the card, shipping, and Ebay or PP fees.

“Self-employment activities include income from sole-proprietor businesses, as well as income received as a non-employee on Form 1099-MISC. Taxpayers who receive 1099-MISC forms at the end of the year do not usually have taxes withheld to offset the 1099 income, but are allowed to claim expenses on Schedule C to reduce the amount of tax on the income. Revenue may be earned through contract work for other companies, or by direct customer or client sales.”

I am a CPA, but not a tax professional.

Sources:

@zubat
taxes.lovetoknow.com/irs-schedule-c
support.taxslayer.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015902611-Why-do-I-have-to-report-my-1099-MISC-or-1099-K-on-a-Schedule-C-

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@zubat - is that still applicable if the form I receive is a 1099-K as opposed to the 1099-MISC mentioned above?

Also, if I’ve held the cards for longer than a year - will it still be considered typical sales or gain on sale of an asset due to the time held?

If I’m asking too much - just let me know lol

Thank you for the response though.

@mewtuw,

1099 K will work the same as 1099 MISC for a schedule C. Don’t worry about that.

Somebody else answer the 2nd question. Its a complicated question which as a CPA I don’t want to answer.

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@zubat - I’ll have to contact a local professional Charlie eluded to earlier. I appreciate your answer though.

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To jump in on this thread. Does paypal not sort out F&F payment in sales statements until the time of deciding to send a 1099? This is the first year I’m nearing the 1099 limit and have to worry about it. If I download all my yearly transactions and remove FF payments I’ve got quite a bit of wiggle room, but all my statements generated by Paypal have me well over 20k in sales. Very annoying/poor features if this is true. Thanks

@pokeaddict84 - F&F payment do not count towards that.

Even though total sales reports includes F&F to show you over $20k, the 1099 should still only be triggered by non-FF payments totals.

Yeah, it’s just annoying they include that in sales statements so you can’t keep track where you actually stand.

There is a very obscure place you can find the difference. I forget where, but I found out when I called PayPal a couple years ago and they showed me one tool that separates FF from GS. It only took about 5 minutes on the phone, may be worth a shot if you want to try to get clear on it before year’s end.

It would be pretty easy to export all your transactions into a .csv and once opened with excel just filter out transactions with fees leaving you with just the FnF transfers.

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Yeah I did that a day or so ago, hence how I figured out I had a few $1000 wiggle room left, but its a ton of work deleting 600+ rows since every CC payment transfer to your PP account is also in there. Just seems like for how many years they have been a company they would have much better statement filter options by now.

It depends if you are a collector or a trader. For this you must compare your activities with the ‘badges of trade’.

Are you working in excel? Not sure how good you are with excel but having the huge data dump the export provides it is super easy to use excels filters to remove out anything you don’t want. Very quick if you know what you are doing so if it seems like deleting 600 rows (all with a similar distinguishing feature) takes too long you are doing it wrong.

Anyone know if the 1099-K $20K AND 200 sales still applies? I recently read language somewhere about 200 “listings” versus sales, but can’t recall where I read that. As well, is it solely PP now and no longer ebay that “tracks” the sales numbers for the purposes of generating the reported income?

It’s still PP that sends the 1099 if they are still your payment processor. However, if EBay has already forced you into their managed payments system, then I believe eBay would be the ones tracking your transactions and amounts.

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Name checks out