IRS surveying sales of tickets on StubHub

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Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Not surprising at all. A continued effort to stifle anyone from making money other than big corporations. The ongoing war against small business or anyone similar wages on...
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See, the thing is, only profits are taxed for small businesses. So the key for you, Oglethorpe, is not to earn a profit. Then you won't have to pay your fair share in taxes.
 

50PoundHead said:
I believe $600 is the amount where a 1099 has to be issued for contract work (or at least it used to be that when I did some low-level consulting). That was a number of years ago and I'm a little surprised it hasn't been adjusted upward (if that is indeed the case).
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We hire some contract programmers and have to file for anyone earning $600 or more. And it seems to have been at that amount for a long time.

WOW! I just looked it up and the first law covering this type of reporting was in 1939 for $1,000 (about $20,000 today). In 1955 it was revised to $600 (about $6200 today), and has not changed since. It’s been 67 years since the last revision and needs to be revised.

Good article at:
abovethelaw.com

The Form 1099's Minimum $600 Reporting Requirement Is Almost 70 Years Old Without Adjusting For Inflation - Above the Law

Back in 1954, $600 had a lot of purchasing power. Now, not so much. Should the reporting requirement be increased?
abovethelaw.com abovethelaw.com
 

WAGopher said:
What’s stifling about that? You make money, pay your taxes, and all is good.

Of course there should be reasonable and fair tax rates.
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There are a variety of mechanisms, accounting practices to legally avoid tax, some of which are generally only available to the wealthy or larger businesses but a qualified accountant or attorney would need to comment on that. The argument, then, is over what’s “fair” and what should be legal, and then broadly one’s philosophy on how high tax should be or how $ is allocated.

I suppose some of the angst beyond philosophy is probably along the lines of closing those mechanisms available to large business and the wealthy before having a federal agency monitoring and auditing every Tom, Dick, and Harry’s bank account balance and transactions and thereby off the books income. The lawn boy lobby is probably not powerful in Washington.



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WAGopher said:
We hire some contract programmers and have to file for anyone earning $600 or more. And it seems to have been at that amount for a long time.

WOW! I just looked it up and the first law covering this type of reporting was in 1939 for $1,000 (about $20,000 today). In 1955 it was revised to $600 (about $6200 today), and has not changed since. It’s been 67 years since the last revision and needs to be revised.

Good article at:
abovethelaw.com

The Form 1099's Minimum $600 Reporting Requirement Is Almost 70 Years Old Without Adjusting For Inflation - Above the Law

Back in 1954, $600 had a lot of purchasing power. Now, not so much. Should the reporting requirement be increased?
abovethelaw.com abovethelaw.com
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Tax and regulatory reporting never get less invasive. Won't happen.
 

hello-world said:
Great to see the IRS going after the big guys like teenagers buying bitcoin and boomers selling football tickets. Scum of our society, those folks are.
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What Boomers are making over $600 a year selling tickets?
 


Dave H said:
What Boomers are making over $600 a year selling tickets?
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Not necessarily boomer-related, but assorted practices as diverse as the practice of buying and reselling concert tickets on Stubhub and similar, or video card GPUs on eBay in the age of crypto are a cottage industry. I suppose some sporting events are in high enough demand someone, even a boomer, could easily make $600 per year.
 


Pompous Elitist said:
Not necessarily boomer-related, but assorted practices as diverse as the practice of buying and reselling concert tickets on Stubhub and similar, or video card GPUs on eBay in the age of crypto are a cottage industry. I suppose some sporting events are in high enough demand someone, even a boomer, could easily make $600 per year.
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I know a guy that buys clothing/shoes on clearance at places or at the outlet mall and then re-sells on Ebay. He makes over $20,000 a year doing it (I couldn't believe it when he told me, partly because I couldn't picture him going to buy all those clothes but also how much money he was making). I think he's the kind of guy the IRS is trying to go after. I'm all for closing as many tax loopholes as possible, but the $600 limit seems way too low in my opinion.
 

Word said:
I know a guy that buys clothing/shoes on clearance at places or at the outlet mall and then re-sells on Ebay. He makes over $20,000 a year doing it (I couldn't believe it when he told me, partly because I couldn't picture him going to buy all those clothes but also how much money he was making). I think he's the kind of guy the IRS is trying to go after. I'm all for closing as many tax loopholes as possible, but the $600 limit seems way too low in my opinion.
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I think it is very possible the number is just the law and what anyone spend serious time on is something else.

It really wouldn’t take much to gather the stub hub data and refer tax records and come up with conflicts and fire off some standard IRS letters for most and give the “woah what is this?!?!” Extra attention.

IRS did something to me when I moved a retirement account that involved signing one check over to another company. It looked like I cashed out. Automatic letter was sent. I just had to tell them “naw it is here now “ and it was all good.
 



Word said:
I know a guy that buys clothing/shoes on clearance at places or at the outlet mall and then re-sells on Ebay. He makes over $20,000 a year doing it (I couldn't believe it when he told me, partly because I couldn't picture him going to buy all those clothes but also how much money he was making). I think he's the kind of guy the IRS is trying to go after. I'm all for closing as many tax loopholes as possible, but the $600 limit seems way too low in my opinion.
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I know people who do that as well...hell I did something similar in my 20s. Cool way to make extra cash and back then Ebay was still kind of underutilized.

The $600 limit is because of the 1099 rule not much the IRS can do about that.
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Not surprising at all. A continued effort to stifle anyone from making money other than big corporations. The ongoing war against small business or anyone similar wages on...
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People who end up in this predicament are the ones who cannot afford a good attorney.

The very rich and the powerful get their hands slapped. A corporate mogul will steal billions, and some of them go to a country club prison and serve very little time for "good behavior."

Bernie Madoff was an exception. On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to operating the largest private Ponzi scheme in history. He was sentenced three months later to the maximum sentence: 150 years in prison with restitution of $170 billion. He died in Federal prison on April 14, 2021. Many retirees lost their life savings through his Ponzi scheme.

en.wikipedia.org

Madoff investment scandal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 

hungan1 said:
People who end up in this predicament are the ones who cannot afford a good attorney.

The very rich and the powerful get their hands slapped. A corporate mogul will steal billions, and some of them go to a country club prison and serve very little time for "good behavior."

Bernie Madoff was an exception. On March 12, 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to operating the largest private Ponzi scheme in history. He was sentenced three months later to the maximum sentence: 150 years in prison with restitution of $170 billion. He died in Federal prison on April 14, 2021. Many retirees lost their life savings through his Ponzi scheme.

en.wikipedia.org

Madoff investment scandal - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Exactly. This is not exactly about Stubhub and some people making a few bucks off tickets. This is about more control over the secondary ticket market, the big boys being pissed they aren't making more of their share on this activity. They want to squash this kind of market if they can.
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Exactly. This is not exactly about Stubhub and some people making a few bucks off tickets. This is about more control over the secondary ticket market, the big boys being pissed they aren't making more of their share on this activity. They want to squash this kind of market if they can.
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The rule has nothing to do with ticket sellers, they just happen to fall under it.

Cash is king again...
 



fmlizard said:
Ok, then I'm declaring my Gophers tickets and "donation" as a business expense if we're going to play that game.
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No can do. Took that away a few years ago.
 

They tightened up paypal about 6 years ago. I was treasurer for our non profit lacrosse association. Set up a paypal to collect fees. Worked great for two years. Year three I got a 1099 from paypal saying i made 5k in revenue and had to go through some hoops to show it wasn't income for me.
 

Now PayPal and other transaction services, too, for those over $600. Story in the Daily Mail today.
 

Add Ticketmaster into the mix, I’m apparently getting a 1099 for selling my Vikings tix
 

Questions remain then is ticket sales a business for casual sellers? How do they know what you paid? What about other tickets unused or if was sold at a loss, can that be deducted ? In the end you probably can prove whatever you may need to if not income but brings about challenges once its initially documented as income to the IRS.

I once got a 1099 for winning a tool shed at a golf tournament, they put the market value in the incorrect spot so i had to pay Social security and medicare tax on it. That was nice. Too much of a hassle to have them correct it.
 

gopherjay said:
No can do. Took that away a few years ago.
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They took away football tickets as a charitable write-off. Makes sense.

This is different. If the IRS is going to consider the $600 in revenue a seller made on a season ticket a form of self-employed income, they also have to allow a deduction for cost of goods sold.
 



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