ebay question

Jay West wrote: paypal really goes after buyers with a vengence. They don't seem to give a crap what sellers do. I bid on a camera and won the auction, but the seller gave me the finger and said "oops, too little money, i messed up not screwing you with a reserve" and ebay did absolutely nothing, and he continued vic^h^h selling to others, and does to this day. To the point you bring up, I think that the fact that they don't void out all those "you arent bidding on the real thing, we, just will tell you where to get it free" auctions for disk drives, and so forth is basically totally ignoring policing of bidders. The sellers of that crap have very high "approval" ratings, because they have gamed their ratings thru the roof. If you cannot examine the bidders, pre bid, you can't see if they are shills (usually bidders with 0 or 1 priors), or ridiculous sham bidders (with ratings make up of hundreds of $1 crap bids). I'd only bid on a private auction if you know the bidder, or can obtain real contact with them, and assess their integrity. Otherwise as you say, you'll get ripped, and Ebay will be after you, not the seller, since you are a buyer, and you (not the seller) pays ebay profits. I think the same exemption that applies to selling personal items in a casual fashion, such as a garage sale, or penny saver sale of excess would apply. If you sell a personal item it is the profit that governs the report, not the gross sale amount. If you get a bargain Apple 1 at a garage sale, and sell it for $30,000 to Steve Jobs, you get to report the 29,995 profit as income. If you buy the $5 TI 99/4A and sell it for $50, you probably could shine on that amount, if that is all you make. Technically, you should keep books if you do enough business in this way, and file a schedule C on the results. I think as an entity backed by a bank, they have to report any single transaction to the IRS that is $10,000 or more, as do you technically. That is all the reporting I know of. Your own bank only reports your interest income, nothing else to the IRS, on ordinary banking operations. I cant think of anything that paypal is doing that is reportable compared to a bank, or to a credit card processing operation (again, no IRS reports) that is unique or regulated. All the above is my opinion, I have no professional standing to defend this, but my own experience. I personally operate all sales thru my business checkbook and account for this, so there is no question in the end what happened. Jim