More about taxes on eBay
A previous post noted that efforts were afoot for the IRS to tax Internet transactions on sites like eBay. Some more details about the IRS plans are at Ars Technica:
Changes are contained in the President’s 2008 budget proposal. Instead of targeting only Internet auction sites, the current proposal actually expands the definition of a “broker” to include middlemen that don’t actually function as the customer’s agent in a transaction—like eBay, for instance. Brokers currently need to file a form with the IRS that gives the name, address, and gross proceeds of each customer they work for; under the new proposal, many more companies would need to do the reporting.
The Treasury Department wants the change because, as the budget request notes, “compliance increases significantly for amounts that a third party reports to the IRS.” But this isn’t a change that will apply to all eBay sellers; in fact, most will be exempt from the new reporting requirements.
Internet auction sites will only be required to report customer revenue information if the customer does more than 100 separate transactions in a fiscal year and generates more than $5,000 in gross proceeds. In a report from the Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee (part of the IRS), the new proposal is supported by a 2005 study showing that over 700,000 Americans have a primary or secondary source of income through eBay. Essentially, these people are running small businesses, but IRS research on small business tax returns shows that “non-farm sole proprietors under-report 57 percent of business income on Schedule C” (if you’re a non-American who has never experienced the wonders of “Schedule C,” count yourself lucky).
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