Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Have you used Turbotax in the past? I haven’t heard of TaxAct but we had a small mail audit because of a flaw in the Turbotax software during the year my son turned 13. Turbotax allowed the childcare credit and shouldn’t have (I had entered his correct birthdate). I don’t even want to tell you about the experience I had trying to straighten it out with the IRS since they also incorrectly denied the one for my younger child and then stonewalled us.
I really don’t think I could come up with an accurate total for my used unlisted items without great effort so I will look at this – thank you. Easier to do for my new items that are left.
Mark Tew has a facebook page and gave this answer: “As of 2018 thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, if you use cash basis for inventory as part of your regular method of accounting (deduct inventory as you purchase it), you can also do so for tax purposes.” I’m not sure I follow for old purchases, so will have to look into it.
Right, we are giver not taker states. And this change really felt divisive and politically motivated. The net effect is to hurt the blue states’ bottom line if this new cap sticks around and people actually relocate. Certainly it affects individual taxpayers now because of the higher cost of living and higher state and local taxes they are already paying. I think most Americians would agree it’s fundamentally unfair to pay federal tax on dollars you gave away in tax to the state or local government. I don’t always agree with state and local spending priorities but that’s out of my control beyond voting with limited choices.
Yes Jay! Just regular homeowners on expensive and highly taxed dirt. Thanks for listening to my rant. LOL. Ebay helped me pay my higher quarterlies so I’m grateful for that. I’m waiting to hear in the news when more people in the high tax states start figuring it out as they get their returns done…
@Temudgin I was hoping you’d chime in. I did pay quarterlies (was a contractor at my legal job) and I did collect and pay sales tax. There are many factors but since I have been steadily making a profit for several years, never had a loss, and keep all of my records I think I’m firmly in business territory. Of course this is kind of a fun game to me, but they don’t know that and currently we are using the money for extra living expenses.
I think I need to value all of my ending inventory in order to complete schedule C though, and that’s going to be a bear bookkeeping-wise because I have a big backlog. In the past I only tracked the COGS for the items that sold during the tax year.
I agree it doesn’t seem necessary or worthwhile to create an entity. We have a steep annual tax to keep that going in CA and it seems hard to tell if resellers will qualify for the new 20% deduction. There seems to be a lot of confusion about that. Of course not for attorneys who didn’t have the right lobbyists apparently.
I listed 4 items this week and I’ve really lost my listing enthusiasm for the first time in a long while. My daughter and I spent some nice time together but potential listing time was more limited than I figured it would be. I’m focused on my bookkeeping because I don’t track COGS throughout the year so it takes a while…(said with Eeyore voice).
Total Items in Store: 309 Ebay, 45 Mercari
Items Sold: 3 Ebay, 0 Mercari
Gross Sales: $80
Cost of Items Sold: $16
Highest Price Sold: $35 New ceramic watering can
Average Price Sold: $27
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 4Well at least it was easy to do my numbers this week. 🙂 February is always my slowest month and I’m really not feeling it for listing. I prefer to do my COGS bookkeeping than list, but that needs to get done anyway.
Mercari news and it’s not good. Just as Mercari was starting to get some traffic and traction, they just really bumped up their shipping rates on packages .5-3 pounds. Someone in a nearby zone would pay a lot more than calculated and Poshmark was already high so they only bumped .30 apparently. You still have the option to ship on your own, which is great.
A bigger downer is that the Facebook group noticed Mercari isn’t showing in Google front pages all of the sudden like they were before. Instead Ebay’s product pages are coming up near the top! Pretty great for Ebay. This page example is from a search I did for an item I just listed on Mercari (which I scrolled 4 pages for and never saw). Ebay comes up first and it’s not really a single product page, it sort of takes you to best match listings. Can’t tell if they are promoted. So, who’d they have to sleep with at Google…no just kidding!
Re taxes, yeah it’s a big deal. People have fun blowing their refunds. And 6% of us are paying MORE taxes, some of us in the thousands! Thank God our kids are under 17 or it would have been even worse. People are even moving to Florida from high tax states over this SALT deduction cap. It’s really unfair to pay double taxes to State and Fed. I think you are right Jay that tax changes will affect winter and spring sales. Refunds will be delayed this year too.
@Suzy I use $40/year Easy Auction Tracker. It’s all I need at this point. I’m very good at keeping records and receipts but not so good at keeping up bookkeeping monthly, so at the end of the year it takes a while to put in COGS. Mark Tew suggests keeping up an inventory spreadsheet at this part-time level. I’m not buying as much these days so I’m hoping to keep up this year.
I forgot that I do have seasonal items and I have started pulling boxes in anticipation of a season. Some items are only somewhat seasonal, so I tried to have target months to list them.
One of the hard parts about this is that I have items I bought three years ago – like a coffee mug – that could be shipped at the time relatively cheaply. Postal rates have increased substantially since then. Such a bummer about having piles since you are stuck with your old decisions. But, there are cool items in the piles too to rediscover.
@Jo Welcome. I bought a bunch of bankers boxes to make sure all the spill out was contained. I started by sorting into like items because listing goes faster that way. It’s kind of nice to switch categories when you get tired of listing some type of thing. I bring one box at a time into the house so it seems less daunting. This way I can see and remember what kind of items that I don’t like to deal with listing or that take a long time to research. It all helps me decide what I will source again and at what expected margin. Anything new I buy gets listed first before I go back to the piles.
Personally, from unlisted I have only purged the items I bought with damage. I’m making myself list anything worth $10 or more as kind of a punishment. It’s all part of the learning process.
Have some time today but feeling really unmotivated to list for some reason. Sales are crazy slow this week. So I decided to update photos of my death piles – finally! Thanks Amatino.
Behold my remaining death piles. Pretty much limited to the garage. Have about 5 bankers boxes in the guest room unlisted. Maybe 15 or so in the garage. Many smalls included though. I’m happy things aren’t really spilling out and the guest room closet is not packed any longer. Long way to go but I made progress last year without donating much. Not much sourcing last year either. I just missed a rummage sale because my friend was in town. I should thank her! I also have some Kondoing to do with our stuff, so there is another layer to all this.
I have a West Point Pepperell vintage sheet set for sale from the 80s with a similar logo on the package. When I googled it, it looked like it merged with Westpoint Stevens at some point.Package logo in photos
@Julie great score on the quantity listing of party favors. I don’t find them super cheap locally but have some some sets before. Something to look out for because they are temporarily sold when the movies come out but mainstream retailers don’t seem keep a lot of different themes on hand any at one time.
Total Items in Store: 309 Ebay, About 45 Mercari
Items Sold: 4 Ebay, 4 Mercari
Gross Sales: $215 Ebay, $75 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $26 plus shipping included $13 + some items ours
Highest Price Sold: $135 Ebay UK Needlepoint Kit
Average Price Sold: $53 Ebay, $19 Mercari
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $38 for 3 items
Number of items listed this week: 2Slow week on Ebay, but luckily sold a nice item after making offers to watchers on Ebay. I’m happy they added that option. Taking low offers on old Mercari listings. I’m very happy that I cut back on free shipping as I am noticing the bump. It cost over $5 to ship a 13 ounce Mercari item in Paypal.
When I was doing RA I was plowing a lot of profit back into inventory, but now, I’m in siphoning mode with this business and it’s helping us with some expenses. The RA did really well but the deals are not as good now. I suspect with the popularity of RA growing, retailers will continue to make things harder on resellers. We’ll see. I think I’m doing ok with my used and vintage items but it’s been hard to list lately.
BTW, I went to the REI garage sale and I recommend it if buying for yourself, but not for reselling. There were some items nearly new.
Have a great week!
