eBay 1099 issues

[parkplace33]

Originally Posted by G1911

It's almost just not worth selling cards at all unless they are big ones. Sales have always been taxed (in theory, at least), but with the 1099 that assumes profit absolutely changes everything. I don't have receipts for this now duplicate I bought at a show when I was 17. I have never seen a single table issuing reciepts. I don't remember what the heck I paid for a lot of my stuff; many thousands of transactions over my entire lifespan. How do I even know my cost if I did? I bought a big lot for $1,500, I kept some cards, traded some cards, sell a couple dupes. A whole lot of very arbitrary accounting to divide up that $1,500. It's just too much work to bother with when I have to give a high percentage to the state and don't have paperwork to defend my accounting like 99.9% of long-time hobbyists, the platform fees, etc. There's just so little profit in it, and risk in doing so if the state decides they don't like how I accounted my cost basis from many year ago after the fact. 28% + 10.3% state income tax plus possibly 3.8% would be almost half; and if I don't remember my cost to be safe I need to pay that on the whole sum. My dupes mostly just sit here in boxes, many given away for free if they aren't anything special (I'm sure someone can come up with a way I need to payoff the state to do that ). It just ain't worth getting into it over a few hundred dollars in cards with an IRS doubling in size.

eBay has definitely suffered for this, and I suspect will face a further decline as casuals find out the hard way the state is coming after them for selling a few cards on eBay. Nothing eBay can do about the state needing to squeeze more cash out of the population to pay for whoever it is being redistributed to next. I notice the supporters of high taxes and 1099's sure do like to be paid in ways that avoid or obfuscate such reporting when I buy a card from them

I see this all the time on Social Media. "Here is my Ebay store, hit me up to make a deal".