Not a big fan (in principle of course) of lots of 'off the books/unreported' income.
There are arguments of course - but, in general - business is business, and income is income.

Tell that to the gal in Spokane that lives in her car and subsists on tips, while the CEO of the restaurant makes ten thousand times what she makes in a year....No taxes on tips and small Ebay fees should be something we are FOR and don't let the Trumps of the world steal it from working folk.

Ebay has been a great place for years to have a digital "yard sale" and get rid of unneeded stuff.

This recent tightening of this Ebay monitoring all the way down to $600 is asinine....$600 is the gold in one old 14K class ring.

(some with validity) And still - off the books income (in general) is no service to the either the economy, or to the underclasses that one might think ... While, at the same time, being a very clear benefit and boon to all manner of unsavory and just down right criminal ... (human trafficking, gambling, bribery and extortion, money laundering, all manner of illicit black market activity ...)

So .. before we trot out the CEO vs beleaguered waitress subsisting on tips ... I'd like to take a look at the bigger picture ... And, frankly - not a fan of the contractor that is buying his (questionable) materials black market and kick-backs, paying his employees off book and under the table, and cheating (like a demon) on his taxes ... Great guy there! Backbone of the U.S. economy! But .... you do you.

We are talking about a small time Ebay seller that was being squeezed, squeezed and squeezed more and now is back to where it should have been...Chinese sellers exploit our tax system AND our postal service.

You do realize that some huge seller in China sells a $8 watch SHIPPIN INCLUDED, that the USPS is responsible for picking up the tab at Long Beach to deliver it to Hoboken??... In other words, HUGE sellers in China are exploiting Ebay, the USPS and the US tax system, all the while, (before this passed), tiny sellers in this country were being targeted. I can't even mail you a box of tissue paper from Tennessee to Georgia for the amount that foreign Ebay sellers are getting for their entire product SHIPPED from China...It's shameful.

All of this stuff of: "off the books income", and "human trafficking", "extortion", "money laundering" and "illicit black market activity" are massive strawmen that don't apply to someone that sells $2000 dollars worth of their old trinkets on Ebay in a years time.

The people that this particular change has helped are small, low income tiny Ebay sellers and tip employees....The very people we need to vote for us.

Last edited Sun Jul 27, 2025, 02:11 PM - Edit history (1)

to indicate that I was referring to off the book income, in general. And in any event - a $20,000 cap - sounds more like real income (and business endeavor?) to me, than Grandma just shifting a couple of keepsakes and trinkets.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Repeating (I'll allow for a certain amount of common sense exception, i.e., the teen earning occasional baby-sitting money) - but, by and large, off the book income is generally not such a great thing. For you, for me - for any of us.

How you define "income"? Specifics are everything.

Say I decide to list a few things on Ebay...I sell my old 1980's gold class ring on Ebay for $550, my mom's sterling silver set she gave to me before she died for $3500...Maybe I might need the money for rent this month too and then I list and sell my old Monopoly game from the fifties that my grandmother gave me as a kid for $200.....Is that income?...

These items were owned by me for decades and under the just prior $2500 rule that was about to become even more oppressive with the $600 tax rule , it had to all be accounted for....The sales limit was $20,000 for decades and it directly hurt low income people, and did NOT hurt people with wheelbarrows of money.

No, "income" is defined as what the CEO "earns" when he sells his 2.5 million dollar stock options after my neighbor got laid off.

should be reported. Whether it should be taxed or not is another level of the discussion. But - how is that ever to be determined, if it is never reported?

And, yes - despite your obvious 'grievances' against the 'corporate CEO' - in my own mind that does not offer exemption to the lower class and working population. We should all be 'reporting' (within the constraints of common sense). And Ebay (although no particular target or offender) - is a fairly good example of a situation wherein those 'records' are already easily and readily available. So ... Why not .. ?

Just cannot come around to the idea of cheating and evading the 'system' amounts to any sort of greater good - (regardless the many rants against the 'corporates' )

All reporting does is allow for taxes to be calculated...What other reason would "reporting" do?

How much is "casual"?

income, above a certain thresh hold, is supposed to be taxable. Do you disagree with this basic premise? And, yes - reporting is necessary to come to any kind of fair determination of what that tax ought to be. How else? Ebay (as an example) already has these figures readily available and at their finger tips ... So why not .. ?

My term(s) 'casual' and 'common sense' (although maybe not the best wording) were offered to describe things (as offered in previous post) such as an 'occasional' baby sitting job - or maybe the $5-10 dollars you got for turning in your bottles and cans at the recycling center - the 5er somebody handed you when you helped jump their car in the parking lot. On the other hand - if that same teenager is actually a hired nanny/au-pair - and as a result is making some standard (and predictable) wage? - then that is obviously something that should be reported. Same thing with the guy (or girl) that is (routinely) doing your yard - for an agreed upon sum/wage. (and doing the same for others, six days a week) That's reportable income. And should be.

The problem with all of this is precisely defining terms such as "occasional" and "fair determination" and "common sense"...Those words all sound great on a forum, but in reality are not legal terms in any way.

That is why numerical cut-off amounts are in place and should be, otherwise everything is open to interpretation.

Can you imagine arguing a case in court that the speed limit was not "common sense"...Or maybe you could plead that you only "occasionally" speeded....Those terms sound good for the emotional among us, but the reality is actual numbers....$2500, $20,000 $600 are all actual numbers and not feelz and interpretation.

The bottom line is that average folks are hurting and so they sell their assets to pay bills....They might have credit card debt, medical bills, weather damage. So they sell their grandma's silver that was given to them for $5K and their class ring for $500 and maybe some collectible X-Men comic books they collected when they were you and now they are worth $2000 and the seller needs the money.

To punish and twist the necks of the lowest earning workers with a $2500 annual cut-off for selling their own assets and who are simply selling a few thousand dollars in these assets to pay bills, is exactly why the Democratic party exists....Otherwise, we can be Republicans and hire a fleet of attorneys like Trump and Musk and skillfully write-off millions of dollars of taxes a year...Meanwhile your neighbors is getting audited because she sold $2600 of her Beanie Babies on Ebay that she didn't file a Capital Gain.

This kinda thinking is how you lose elections.

And, yes .. we do need actual definitions and cut off points. (and presumably what we have our tax codes for?)

If someone is having hard times and struggling - then we would presume that any tax 'owed' on their $2500 would be very minimal or practically nonexistent. If in fact that person is in a somewhat more privileged position - are we making the argument that they also do not owe - anything, on an equivalent amount? But, in either case - the the government has no cause to even have knowledge ? What I really can't see - and see no real plausible argument for - is that all manner of income should go 'unreported'. (meaning any sort of fair or reasonable accounting is ever even arrived at .. ) Where does that species of thought come from?

Like I started out saying ... Arguments ... And I can see reasonable and practical argument for minimum thresh holds ... But $20,000 (as is being advocated elsewhere here) .. ? No - that is just an argument for 'skinning the taxman'. (i.e., cheating) And serves no aspect of the public good. (YOU may go home whistling with more money in your pocket ... But, I and everyone else, is going home with less!)

Not the guys and gals selling their personal trinkets on Ebay without having to concern themselves with IRS 1099's and audits for baseball cards over pennies in comparison.

And our "tax code" nows goes back to its $20,000 reporting limit.....Where it was for decades prior to 2020.

of this being a good guys vs 'corporate CEOs' issue. Are we arguing that middle and working class people should pay NO taxes - (because, 'corporate suits and lawyers' .. )? And if not - wherein the logic that they should not have to report income? Evading taxes is - evading. (and screwing over the 'other guy'). And I don't find it persuasive - nor find good ethical boundary - in school yard finger pointing and, "he did it first!"

As to what is ethical and what is not. The law should have never started to squeeze the little guy in the first place...First at $2500 reporting threshold and then a $600 reporting threshold...It's good that those are gone, which now takes it back to where it should have always been,if not more.

I also wonder why brick and mortar auction houses can auction million dollar estates and nothing is filed with taxes...Hmmm.

Methinks it's more about simple wish for some entity to track the money and where and how it's spent than it is the small amount of money involved.

I paid taxes on everything I sell plus Ebay fees etc etc

The government already got the tax the first time it sold.

I wish they would raise it to $100k, but that's a start.

the problem is not so much the reporting, it's that thanks to the big bad bill, lower income people are paying more taxes. also, 20k in sales is only 20k in profit if you haven't bothered to track and document the cost of goods sold. i love cash in my pocket as much as the next person, but ignoring reporting of income of tens of thousands of dollars is a good way to help bankrupt a nation.

600 is indeed too low, but 20k is also too high. note too that the threshold is 20k AND 200 transactions for each vendor. it's pretty easy to spread transactions around various payment vendors and make a 6 figure income that is not reported at all.

Bothering to track what my Grandmother gave for a Monopoly game in 1955 or what I paid for my senior class ring in 1982? What do I do then, use an inflation calculator to decide what my profit from 40 years ago is depending on the buying power of the dollar then versus now? It's asininely oppressive to someone who just needs cash and gas money...$20,000 a year for all of the trouble involved is nothing when you own the items already and you are just selling because you need cash.

Ebay is not the only sales platform that is required to send 1099-K forms. In fact the words "Ebay" are not mentioned in the legislation. It;s just Ebay is mentioned because they are the largest sales platform. In other words, you can't structure sales over another platform and not expect all of them to track their individual sales amounts to you.

Besides, go on your local Facebook marketplace and you;ll see tens of thousands of personal items being sold for literal cash as we speak, and NONE of that it tracked any more than a garage sale is tracked.

pay pal, venmo, zelle, apple pay, etc. if you used all of those you could have a very nice income that is not reported at all. heck, you could still sell 50k via one transaction on one platform and it would not be reported. i agree that 600 is too low. IMO 20k and 200 transactions per vendor is too high. arbitrarily, half that would still be perfectly reasonable in your example. tax avoidance should not be difficult, but it should not be the default.

You think $20,000 is too high and it should arbitrarily be half of that...Another poster in the thread thinks it should be $100,000.

Personally, $20,000 is fine with me, since it was that way for decades... Remember too, the $20,000 of 1992 is far more than the $20,000 of 2025.

I'll paraphrase someone on the eBay forums "Take these crumbs, peasants!"

Apparently some believe that we peasants shouldn't even have the crumbs without filing a 1099 to be able to keep them.