Ep 226 || Tax Considerations for Selling Personal Property

[podcast_team]

Mark Jaeger of TaxAct shares what every seller of personal property needs to know when it comes to taxes. Brian and Griff answer questions on the impact of feedback, the combined shipping calculator, the best way to record inventory, and what actually happens to a parcel shipped through the Global Shipping Program.

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Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: I'm Griff, and this is the eBay for Business Podcast, your source for the information, and of course, the inspiration to help you start, manage and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This is episode 226, and we're back in the studio. Hi Brian.

Brian: Hello Griff. Great to be back.

Griff: Hi here. We're gonna lose you for a week or two. You're here next week though, right?

Brian: I will be around next week, and then end of the following week I'll be in Denver at a seller meetup. So any of our listeners that are in the Denver area, check out the events page and join us for a Thursday evening.

Griff: And that's on Community,

Brian: It is community.ebay.com. And following that, I'll be in our Dublin office meeting with some of our colleagues and then the London office for a few days.

Griff: Such a jet setter!

Brian: I don't know about this.

Griff: I'll be here. I'll be here all alone sitting, you know, in my chair with my tea.

Brian: And his violin.

Griff: world's smallest violin playing.

Brian: So Griff, who do we have on the docket this week?

Griff: This week we have another segment in our ongoing series on taxes with our good friend at Tax Act, Mark Jaeger. Mark's gonna be back and we'll be talking about how to report the sale of personal property. We know how to report our sales. What happens if you sell something that's not necessarily your inventory, but it's something personal? How do you report it? Is it taxable? We're gonna talk about that and we have questions of course, and in fact, but Brian, this week, there's, there's a lot of questions to get to. There's six questions.

Brian: Sometimes you like call them, but I guess you didn't.

Griff: Well this time what I did is, I caught us up. So now the queue is clean. So if you've got questions, this is the time to send them in to podcast@ebay.com where you can phone 'em in at (888)723-4630. And by the way, we, we have a surprise guest waiting in the Riverside.FM lobby. It's gonna be on in a few minutes.

Brian: Surprises.

Griff: But before we get to our guest, what's in the eBay news this week, Brian?

Brian: Absolutely nothing.

Griff: .

Brian: So actually, seriously, we have no news this week Griff.

Griff: No news?

Brian: Zero news.

Griff: All quiet on the eBay front then.

Brian: All quiet.

Griff: Then maybe we should meet our surprise guest right now. She's actually a colleague and she recently embarked on a brand new adventure here at eBay as the host of our new, our second podcast series called the eBay Spotlight Podcast, where she talks to sellers for about maybe 15, 20 minutes and finds out their deeper story of how they get started, what fires them up. Welcome, Georgea Mpampanis

Brian: Welcome.

Georgea: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Griff: Georgea joins us from the beautiful state of, well, it's not a state, it's a province.

Georgea: It's a province, yeah.

Griff: Ontario.

Georgea: Yes, I'm in Toronto, Ontario, so I'm sure a bunch of listeners are from there too.

Griff: So Georgia, tell us about yourself. How'd you get started in this?

Georgea: I have been with eBay for almost two years. In March it will be two years, although it feels like a lot more because of all the work we put in and all the great initiative. Yeah, I feel like I've been here for 10 years, but it's been almost two. And I've been involved within eBay Open, of course, the big one. We have seller story videos that we have on YouTube and Facebook, and of course now the eBay Sellers Spotlight Podcast. My official title is the Seller Social Media Manager. So I did manage the eBay for Business Facebook as well as the YouTube channel, and I've just expanded ever since. And here I am!

Griff: Here you are.

Brian: fantastic.

Griff: What's up with this new podcast? What's it about?

Georgea: Yeah, so for anyone who has not tuned in yet, which I hope everyone has, but in case you haven't, we are highlighting sellers. Everyone has a very different story to tell. It's kind of like, I would say an extension of our video series. We wanna tap into how they started, what were they doing before then and where did they see themselves going in the next couple of years.

Griff: If you have an interesting story to tell, you want to contact us and you can send an email to podcast@ebay.com saying, I wanna be on Seller Spotlight and Georgea will set you up.

Georgea: Yeah, I'm looking for all new sellers. Come on through.

Brian: A little bit like the seller journey, then you kinda like, you know, tease that out of them.

Georgea: Totally.

Brian: Yeah. You know, I just looked at the page of all the podcasts that you've done so far and you've had some incredible guests.

Georgea: I have and there's a lot more coming through soon. So stay tuned.

Griff: Tuned. And right now the cadence is once a month. That's how we started out last October. But is there a change coming to that?

Georgea: Oh, Griff, are you trying to spoil it? Okay, so in March we are gonna have a cadence of two a month. So biweekly, they're gonna start coming up. Stay tuned for that.

Griff: The first and third Wednesday of every month, there'll be a new podcast.

Georgea: That is correct.

Griff: Podcasts are fun, don't you think?

Georgea: They're fun. Honestly, they're so much fun. You get to meet amazing people, you know, you get to be yourself.

Brian: I always find I'm learning stuff. The diversity of sellers that you've had so far, you've probably learned a ton.

Georgea: I'm just very inspired by them. A hundred percent. It's the most fascinating.

Griff: Yeah, after 25 years, I gotta tell you, you still find incredibly interesting and unique stories that pop up. You'd think they'd all be the same, but they're not. Everyone's circumstances are different and it makes for some really compelling and fascinating stories.

Georgea: A hundred percent.

Griff: There'll be a new one coming out third week of February, so that's coming up another four weeks or so. And then, like you said, we'll be every two weeks. I'm so excited.

Georgea: Some more stories to share. It's exciting.

Griff: You can find it on any of your podcast apps. Just go to your podcast app and search for eBay and it pops right up as I find, or you can search for Seller Spotlight. It should pop up. You can also visit it on our community page. We have a separate page now for that. Just go to community.ebay.com. And then once you get there, there's a podcast. It says Podcasts with an S cuz it's plural. Click on it and you'll see it. eBay Seller Spotlight.

Brian: Georgea, I have to ask, you've been doing this now for a few months. What's the thing that you like the most about doing the podcast?

Georgea: The most fascinating part about it is I hear about some incredible people. I love learning what they did before eBay and like what they're doing right now while they're still selling on you. We've had a pilot, we've had a Disney musician, we've had a therapist, we've had a storage warrior, and like the list goes on and on. It's like, what can't these people do? It's, it's unreal.

Griff: Well, Georgea, I want to thank you so much for stopping by and continued success in the future. Thank you.

Georgea: Thank you. And thank you for having me. This is a pleasure. We'll speak soon.

Griff: Thank you. We look forward to more episodes of the eBay Seller Spotlight series, and you can find it on your podcast app. Just search for eBay Seller Spotlight. And you can listen to Georgea and her latest guests.

Griff: Most sellers know how to report their business activity when filing taxes, but what about the sale of personal property? Recently I spoke with Mark Jaeger of TaxAct about this very topic. I asked our good friends at TaxAct, specifically the Vice President of Operations, who's been on our show before from Mark Jaeger to return and answer a few detailed questions this time about selling personal property. Welcome back, Mark.

Mark: Oh, I'm glad to be back here, Griff. Thanks for having me.

Griff: We had quite a bit of feedback. They loved the last segment we did, but I did get a question about selling personal property and you know, what, if I have something that was left to me, I inherited it, what are the capital gains on that? And, you know, how do I determine value? And I know we went into it a little bit, but I think we could probably go a little deeper, if you don't mind.

Mark: Oh, absolutely.

Griff: Is income from selling personal property taxable?

Mark: Well, it's gonna depend. Really, it depends when you sell your personal property, whether that personal property was sold at a gain or at a loss, right? And if it was sold at a loss, it's kind of one of those things, don't worry about it right there. There's nothing to worry about. There's nothing to report. Even in prior years when the 1099Ks weren't around, there wasn't anything to do, right? It's, it's one of those things and, and I I'm not trying to get too far off track, it's the advantage for the IRS as it relates to the digital age, where we're getting more of these cash used to be cash payments or checks that are now moving to online platforms and you're able to sell things on online platforms like eBay. So with that, obviously the IRS has a chance to see more as it relates to these different services and goods that are being performed or the transactions that are happening across the platform. As it relates to personal property. If it's sold at a loss, there's nothing that needs to be worried about if it's one of those things you don't even need to track on your taxes. However, it's, if it's sold at a gain that is something similar to a stock, let's just throw out a stock like eBay, for instance. And if you buy eBay stock,

Griff: I can't comment on that at all.

Mark: No comment on that. But anyway, if you sell stock, right, and you, and you purchase it and then you sell it at a gain, you have to report that as a capital gain on your taxes. Selling personal property is very similar to selling stock, where if you purchase something at one price and you sell it for a higher price, the difference with some expenses included in there, you have to report on your taxes as a capital gain.

Griff: Yeah, that makes sense. When we started off, I said, is it taxable? But if I sell something that's personal property at a loss, do I also not have to report it?

Mark: Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah. So for instance, if you purchase a table at $1,200 for instance, and you sell it on eBay for $800, you actually have a net loss on that transaction from the sale of the table. And you can't deduct losses for personal property on your taxes. So there's really no need to report it, it's just not a reportable transactional event on your tax return.

Griff: In my case, so for example, I sell some personal property outside of my business selling on eBay, it's still gonna show up on my 1099K and if I don't report it on my taxes, that's gonna be a discrepancy in the number. I actually have this going on right now. I sold about $3,000 worth of personal property, all of it at a loss. But I did it because I just wanted to get rid of it. If I don't report it somehow, should I be concerned that there's gonna be a discrepancy from my 1099K this year and the amount I declare as gross income?

Mark: Yeah, I can say you shouldn't be concerned. Overall, I say that with a little bit of an asterisk, right? Because the IRS still hasn't issued really their general guidance around this. The IRS general guidance right now is, hey, the rules are the rules from last year. You're just getting an informational return, a 1099K and for reporting purposes, you should follow what you've done in the past. Now, if you weren't claiming these gains, you know, in the past, obviously you should have been right? That's part of the tax rules and you need to do that. But from a capital law standpoint, you never would've reported it in the past and you never needed to report it in the past. That's even what the rules state in the instructions for it from that standpoint. I look at it as just because you get a 1099K in the mail or you get it through logging into eBay or get it through some account, it doesn't necessarily mean that that 1099K needs to be reported on your taxes. It's just an information return for the IRS. Now, if the IRS sees a whole bunch of these and none of these things are being reported, you know, I can never say with a hundred percent certainty what the IRS is gonna do. But I'll tell you, they're going to get a lot of these forms and they only have so many staff members. It's not like they can go through and, you know, want to check and audit every one of these when they know that individuals don't need to report every single one of these.

Griff: Those are in cases where you've sold personal property at a provable loss. That was gonna be my next question. How do I prove if asked that this was a loss? What if I don't have receipts for everything that was personal property?

Mark: In an ideal world, we all keep our receipts for everything that we purchase. Right? Now, we, we all know that's never gonna be the case whatsoever. But back to my original point when we started out is it's a digital age, right? We have a lot more records, whether it's through our bank accounts, whether it's through credit card statements, that we might be able to go back 2, 3, 4, maybe even five years and try to find out that information. So that's what I would say to be my number one thing to look for because that's matter of fact, right? That's the number one thing you can do to prove this. Now, if that can't happen, right, then it comes down to, well, is there readily available information that tells me what that table was worth when I purchased it three, four years ago? Did you have some research that you did from a thrift store value or some market value research that you did that you documented somewhere and saved on your computer that, that you can use? You know, that's obviously great. And then if that's not the case between those things, then that's when life gets a little bit more difficult when determining the cost basis.

Griff: We talked about loss, and now we have the issue that you may have sold personal property for a profit or a gain. And how does that differ when it comes to reporting?

Mark: First and foremost, congratulations if something was purchased and then you actually made more money on it than what you paid for it. So that's always good news when you can start out with that. Now, of course, you know, the IRS is gonna wanna make sure that the federal government gets what they need to get as it relates to that, to that income, but it really comes down to then, okay, now you know your cost basis or hopefully know your cost basis that you purchased this table. I'm gonna use the table example again for, let's just say it was a a $500 table. You're really good at refurbishing these things and selling them for a profit, and then you go to eBay and you sell this thing, let's just say for $1,500. So we're trying to keep it simple. That's, that's a thousand dollars gain that you see overall. Okay, you ended up having to sell somebody, maybe you had a hundred dollars in shipping fees, there might have been some other fee that you had to pay for $400. We're gonna knock those expenses off as part of your cost basis as well. I typically look at it as I add it to the cost basis. So remember I said that cost basis, I believe is $500. Let's add that a hundred dollars for shipping. Let's add those $400 for other fees that that may arise.

Griff: So you can add those?

Mark: To your cost base, yep. So now your cost base is a thousand, sold it for $1,500, you have a capital gain of $500. I have to break that down just a little bit because now that you've figured the $500, you then need to layer in how long you've had it. And then it comes down to, okay, did I purchase this table over a year ago and I sold it and I held it for longer than a year? Or did I sell it within a year? Meaning that it's a short-term gain versus a long-term gain. And the whole reason for that is just the tax implications. You get a lower tax rate if you hold something over a year than you do if it's under a year.

Griff: I know that a lot of the people who tune into this podcast, they're kind of hybrid sellers, so it's not necessarily true that a lot of our audience are what we would call hobbyist sellers. They don't really have, they're not set up as a business on eBay. They're not set up as a business at all. And they would be looking this and saying, you know, all I sold last year was my own personal property, in which case what we just talked about will be germane to you. How does this work though for somebody who is set up as a business? eBay knows that I'm a business. The IRS knows I've filed a Schedule C in the past, so they know I sell for profit and loss as a sole proprietor. What about that hybrid work? Someone like me is selling items from inventory and also sold some personal property.

Mark: Yeah. So we're really gonna have to break those apart. So this is where your organizational skills really come into play here, Griff.

Griff: We're doomed.

Mark: Or our listeners, right? It really comes down to organizations. So you're gonna get this 1099K or maybe even multiple 1099Ks in the mail. And then you're gonna have to look through each one of those, right? And it's gonna depend on each, on each platform. But you might get a 1099K that just, you know, this is only for personal property. Let's put this one in the personal property file. Now I get a 1099K for business for my business. Let's put that one in the business pile. Maybe for some reason you also get a 1099K that combines the two. You might have one that's combined between business and personal. Put that one in a third pile that says this one's gonna take more work. Because now I have to go through those transactions and determine, okay, of this amount that's reported on this 1099K, how do I break that down between what was for business and what was for personal property?

Griff: You're kind of creating these three workflows through your organizational skills where okay, the personal property ones may be not as difficult, especially if, you know it wasn't a gain. Right? You can kind of toss those ones aside. Don't throw 'em out and don't shred 'em, but toss them aside for now. Yeah. You had that second pile for business and in the past you always were reported these business gains or losses. So there's nothing different so much from that standpoint outside of you just get a 1099K. And then it's, if you get those 1099 Ks that combine them, then you have to do a little bit of, uh, work in advance of filing your taxes to kind of separate that out in a spreadsheet or if you can write it on the piece of paper, whatever works to really just figure out what's personal property and what's business.

Griff: Okay. That makes more sense. Yeah, i was a little concerned. The other question I had in a situation like this is I sold this personal property not on eBay, but through another channel. And the way that the channel ended up paying me was through a bank transfer. Can I expect a 1099k from that company that sent me a check or sent a check to my bank?

Mark: Yeah. I wouldn't expect a 1099K in that situation if we're just sending a check to the bank.

Griff: Cause it's not a payment processor.

Mark: It's not a payment processor that, that's right. So you really shouldn't expect one in that case. Now this is brand new, right? This is brand new for, for you all. It's, it's brand new for us, right? So any company, any bank, any processor may confuse the rules, especially in the first year or something goes out where maybe it shouldn't or something should be going out when the way it should. But at the same point just with that situation, it doesn't seem like a 1099K should be coming.

Griff: We had another question come in. If the question came from somebody who was considering running a consignment business on eBay and what they wanted to know was, and what they were assuming, and it sounded wrong to me, is that they would have to report their each consignor's transactions in a 1099 somehow to the US government, and then that means that the consignor would get a 1099. We're not talking about 1099K in particular, but just the idea that, you know, if you hire a contractor or you have, if you hire someone and you pay them, there's that confusion about, am I required to fill out a 1099K for them? Like my accountant sends this to me every year for people, you know, did you hire someone on a full-time basis while you were, or even part-time basis, you gotta fill out a 1099K for them, blah, blah, blah. I wasn't sure how that worked with 1099K. This guy was making a bunch of assumptions and I said, well, I'll ask Mark the next time I talk to him, but I, it doesn't seem to make sense to me that if you're, if you're taking consignment items, items on consignment for a client and selling them and then issuing them a check that that client needs to worry about, doesn't need to worry about 1099Ks or the consignor doesn't have to worry about reporting them through A 1099K process. Correct?

Mark: Yeah, that doesn't, that doesn't seem right now if there's a third party platform that's a payment processor that's seeing these transactions flow, they may not realize it and they may be issuing it in that scenario, but for the most part, you know, things are still following what's happened in prior years. So if you do hire that contractor, I will admit there's still some, there's still a little bit going on with the IRS about, okay, should you be issuing this thing called a 1099 NEC, that's for their non-employee compensation income versus a 1099K and how do you know whether to file a 1099 NEC versus a 1099k. In certain situations and they're still working through that overall. But I, I do agree, I guess Griff from that standpoint, it doesn't feel like anything would change in that scenario or the 1099K report.

Griff: This is all great information and if you have more specific questions or you want to dive deeper into this than we do in the podcast, uh, you can always visit the TaxAct site. What is that link again?

Mark: www.tax act.com/ebay.

Griff: And I will put the link in the summary overview for this episode. So check it there at ebay.com/podcast. Mark, it's always a pleasure. I want to thank you for coming back. We'll talk to you again in a few weeks.

Mark: All right, sounds great. Griff, always, always a pleasure to be here.

Griff: Mark Jaeger is the Vice President of Operations at TaxAct and throughout the year we'll be talking about business and taxes in general. You can always send your questions that you might have to us here at podcast@ebay.com or you can call 'em in at (888)723-44630. And if I can't answer it and I probably can't, I'll make sure we get them to Mark and we can get an answer for you. You got questions? Well, we've got answers, so there! And this week Brian, we have six questions in the queue.

Brian: Six! That must be a record.

Griff: It could be. But in the interest of time, because it's six questions, rather than listen to me rattle off anything about these questions, let's just start right off with the first one. And it's from a relatively new seller who is known on eBay as Stay Home To Shop. Sounds like my life.

Mark: I like that name. That's great.

Griff: Stay Home To Shop. Why don't you read this one, Brian?

Brian: Sure. Hi Brian. Hi eBay. Hi Griff. You've become third place Griff . Sorry, I don't think I've thrown that in this year, so I just had to.I love your podcast show. Your topics are always timely and help sellers like myself. I think I'm doing okay As a newbie seller for my first year, approximately 40 and 50% of the eBay users I've sold to have left positive feedback. I always aim for a hundred percent five star positive feedback scores and that's just my personal goal. I don't offer any rewards to buyers who leave feedback. I won't pester buyers if they don't leave feedback. Some repeat buyers don't leave feedback and I'm not disappointed. The best sign of good customer service is having an eBay user buy again from me. The proof shows up in the sales report.

Griff: Mm, yeah, she's right. Repeat buyers. Agreed. Great indication.

Brian: And a great attitude about it. I like that eBay feedback ratings are sincere and a legit way for buyers to express their thoughts. Just to clarify, my questions are, is there a minimum or average customer feedback response rate? Does the ratio of buyers who leave positive feedback ratings compare to the total number of buyers who complete a purchase and leave no feedback rating, affect an individual seller performance metrics? Thanks for your show. Love, love, love. Any eBay swag you guys can send. So until the next time we connect on eBay or IRL which is in real life, I hope you can stay home to shop. EBay User Id StayHomeToShop all one word.

Griff: We haven't had a question about feedback. It's been a while.

Brian: Has been a while.

Griff: It has been a while.

Brian: This is actually a really good question about feedback.

Griff: It's a good one because it's gives us an opportunity to talk as a lead in to the history of feedback, which I thought we would do. But first, her first part of the question, I was curious, her ratio, which she said is about 40 to 50% of her buyers leave feedback. Sounds like it's pretty good, but is there a minimum or average customer feedback response rate that eBay knows about?

Brian: Back when I used to manage feedback, as you know, and that was more than a decade ago. It was a metric that we tracked. It wasn't a metric that we published though. I'll say though, 40 to 50% it's a good rate. But how often someone gets feedback depends on a number of factors.

Griff: Like what?

Brian: Things, like what category they're in, the item price, some things, um, along the lines of sometimes sellers if they're buying like a really low priced item, they're not gonna take the time to go leave feedback. The other thing that encourages feedback is, does a seller leave feedback first? It actually signals to the buyer that it's been a positive experience and it also is a reminder to the buyer of, oh, that's a something else that I should do within the marketplace. And so that's always a good indicator if someone has higher feedback or or lower. The one thing I would say is I wouldn't worry about how much feedback she gets if you're selling enough stuff, if you're getting 50% of your customers or 40% or even 30% of your customers giving you an indication of whether you're doing well or poorly, that's enough feedback for you as a business owner or as a seller on our platform to make decisions about whether or not you should adjust practices.

Griff: I hadn't thought about category, it's not surprising to me about the price of an item cuz I feel the same way as a buyer. If I've bought something for like $8, chances are I'm not gonna remember to leave feedback. But if I bought something rare and unique and wonderful and I paid $50 or more, I'm more inclined to leave feedback. But I do have a rule as a buyer and I know some sellers that drives them nuts, but I do not leave feedback first. So if you haven't left feedback for me as a buyer, you're not gonna get feedback.

Brian: You are not the only buyer who has that philosophy.

Griff: In fact, I think a majority of our buyers is safe to say probably do.

Brian: Because most of the buyers feel like, Hey, I've paid, I've done the thing that I need to do. Therefore, if it's important to you, leave me feedback.

Griff: Stay home to shop. I've heard over the years, Brian and I have both heard over the years, lots of really creative reasons why people say sellers say, well I won't leave feedback first because x and I always think, well then you're not customer focused. What you're focused on is your own feedback and you're smart when you say you don't pester your buyers. I never bring up feedback, but I've set my accounts up my selling account so that when I sell something and somebody buys it and they've paid for it and it's all immediate payment, they immediately get automatic feedback from me. So I don't have to go in and do it. It's automatic.

Brian: Same with me. I automatic because I don't want to have it is one extra step to remember to go leave feedback. She brought up one other I thought was a really important thing, which was repeat buyers. Yes. She's focused on the right stuff and I'm making the assumption it's a she.

Griff: Yeah, yeah. We don't know and we apologize if we've used the wrong pronoun. We can say they.

Brian: Yep. But I think repeat buyers is really critical. And one of the things that a seller could do is actually send a note to actually, hey, subscribe to my store. Or do things like that. And in those kinds of things, you encourage people to come back and buy more. And if they had a good experience, they're more likely to subscribe to your store, which means they're gonna see your new items when you list them and all of that.

Griff: And wasn't it sometime last year that we actually added a feature to reports that shows you repeat buyers? After 25 years.

Brian: Yes. After 25 years of people, our sellers asking for it.

Griff: Finally we did it. So yeah, that's a good thing. And their other question, of course was the one that we do here occasionally, and I thought it would be time to address that and that's the question she had about feedback, having any impact on performance standards. And we used to do that.

Brian: Yes.

Griff: We don't anymore.

Brian: No, it has no direct bearing on your performance. Like whether you're a Top Rated Seller or above standard. To me, I think the most important thing that feedback for sellers is every once in a while take a look at those comments and don't be afraid of getting a negative comment or a neutral comment. You know, if you did the right thing and you feel it's unfair, okay, move on to your next customer. If it's something though that you think, oh well, well I could have done that better than think about your processes and can you make a change? And you and I have talked about this, it's probably the hardest thing for a seller to do, which is to try not to take it personal, but to look at it objectively and say, did I do something wrong or not? And then even if you didn't do anything wrong, to just try and let it go. I know it's easy for me to sit here and say that in the studio, but.

Griff: Yeah, I've been telling people for years and I've done it myself. I get a, a feedback every few years and negative feedback. It doesn't matter to me whether it was deserved or not. I always think of it now as an opportunity because I can leave a comment, a response to a negative feedback and I always leave something that is very apologetic and very mea culpa, I'm so sorry this happened and I do hope you'll come back and buy from me again. I guarantee the experience will be better regardless of what the situation was. When you do that as a seller, when you respond to a feedback that way, you're telegraphing to future potential buyers that are looking at your feedback that this seller is okay because everyone gets the occasional negative. It's not the negative that potential buyers are looking for. It's how you respond. And if you respond in a professional apologetic way, you're more likely to get that buyer's confidence. Whereas if you respond with something like, well this buyer didn't know what they were doing, couldn't read the description, blocked!

Brian: All in caps.

Griff: Well I'm sure that felt good. I'm not gonna wanna buy from you. You're kind of nasty . So you gotta really think about the theater. Feedback is a form of theater and how you present yourself as really important. So it doesn't have any impact on your performance status, whether, so if you don't get a lot of positive feedback, by the way, my positive feedback left by buyers or feedback at all is about 20%. Mine's pretty low. Even though I give feedback automatically, I never ask for it. And every time I get one of those responses and you know, sometimes people put these things in their packages that say, our goal is five star feedback. And I'm thinking, no, it isn't. What it is is your goal, is your feedback score. You don't really care what happens to me. Don't telegraph that message. Don't ask for feedback. Don't make it an issue. Don't put it in your collateral. You remember back a long time ago when feedback and our detailed seller ratings we're actually part of your seller status. Yes. And a lot of sellers started putting these little cartoon collateral things that they could buy on eBay that, you know, don't ding my stars because then eBay does, it negatively impacts. And the every buyer who gets these say, what the hell do I care about your status? I care about my experience. Don't tell me not to leave a four or a three or a negative.

Brian: And don't make me guilty over it.

Griff: Yeah. It was really, I remember at the time I would just, oh, I'd cringe whenever I'd see these. And I'd think this is just not good.

Brian: And I think the thing to focus, focus on, I mean is there are certain things we do measure you on, you know, late shipment rate and returns or defects in cases. Focus on that stuff.

Griff: Yeah. Well I hope that answered your questionStayHomeToShop. Thank you for listening to the podcast and continued success. I think you have a long future here on eBay. Our next question was sent to podcast@ebay.com. By seller Brian, not you, a different Brian.

Brian: No, it was not me.

Griff: And Brian writes, hello podcast team. Thanks for the podcasts. I have a question. Is there a way to access the saved search data, not mine, but the save search data in general on eBay as a whole? I sell industrial items and not everything I run across shows up on Terapeak. It would be easy to pass on those items, but a lot of industrial items were not made in mass quantities. So there is a possibility of someone looking for that item for maintenance, repair or operation, even though none of them have passed through eBay, at least in the last year, having some data is, if someone is looking for that item via saved search would be valuable when sourcing. Thanks Brian. Well Brian, the bad news is there's no way to access such a data set like save searches of individual buyers, even an aggregate. It's not anything that we would ever release.

Brian: Yeah. And and it's the long tail inventory. It's not something that we hang onto.

Griff: Yeah, and I would say if you have something that isn't showing up in Terapeak or recent search on eBay that would not discourage me from listing it. I would, you know, I'd still take the chance and ask the price I need to ask if it's a fixed price to get a profit from it. I wouldn't let that stop me. Just because something doesn't show up doesn't mean that it's not saleable. I just say list the item.

Brian: The next question is a perennial popular one. It was sent to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller Charlie. Hi Brian and Griff. I really enjoy the show and look forward to listening every week on the 45 minute drive to the nine to five. I'm looking forward to retiring and eBay as the no commute on the nine to five. I normally sell military surplus field gear and every once in a while I get an order with multiple items. I'm always willing to sell more than one item, but the calculated shipping on larger items doesn't seem to be calculated properly. The sale goes through but only adjusts by the weight, not the package size. While this is okay with small items on large items, it has been costing me to package and ship the products. The latest example is for four of the items on this listing. I sold four and the customer paid a $14.60 cents for shipping and I paid $18.06 cents and had to pay for the shipping materials too. Is there a way to set my listing up so they will properly calculate shipping? My store is Chiefs Den and eBay profile name OneBuckSaver. Thank you. And I would be grateful for a mug if there are any left. Thank you Charlie.

Griff: Yeah, well Charlie, there's a, there's a small, I think less than 14, I think there's 12 mugs left. Yeah. And so yeah, you'll get one of those.

Brian: Definitely. I don't think combined shipping calculates the dimensions. Does it?

Griff: It doesn't. And in fact that's something that a lot of sellers have asked for and it's just not possible. I will explain why. It would have to make a lot of assumptions about how you pack your items. We can't do that. So although the combined shipping calculator behind that feature, when you combine multiple purchases like what Charlie's done here, it will figure out based on your weight, the weight that it's going to be. But it's not gonna then say, Oh and then you're gonna need this size box. There's no way for us to know that. And in fact, if we made that assumption, I guarantee you we would make more sellers angry than we would by solving a problem. So that has to be on you unfortunately, Charlie, and the way you can do this, there's different ways, but this is one of the arguments for free shipping because, and when I have multiple quantity items that aren't really super expensive, I always offer them with free shipping. I work the shipping in to the cost of one item. And maybe it's a little less, maybe it's a little more because I calculate beforehand, what if somebody bought four of these? How much is it gonna cost me to ship? What kind of box can I fit them in? And I used the example when I was selling IKEA pride bags when they came out with them during the pandemic and they weren't easy to get. So there was a, a few of us, I, I think I may have referred to this in a long gone episode long past where I got into a friendly competition with another seller and he would lower his price, I'd lower mine, he would raise it, I would raise it. And after mine sold out, I wrote to him or he wrote to me and he said, well done Sir , that was fun .But what I did is I figured out the cost of shipping for shipping one and then I added that in and I discovered that if I multiplied that across a purchase of four or five items that given, of course it's not a huge item and it didn't weigh a lot, I had these options where I ended up making money. I could ship them in, for example, a small flat rate box and I would pay that small USPS flat rate box fee. But because there was no shipping involved, you know, I'd added the shipping into the cost of the item. When I sold large quantities, I actually made money on the shipping. And because shipping is not a line item, there's no negotiation, there's no consideration. The buyer doesn't say, well I paid X for shipping. This is the argument for free shipping in those cases, if you can pull it off, you just take shipping out of the equation and you don't have to worry about it. You can put 'em in the box that best works for you. The other way, depending on the type of item is to try the promotions manager for shipping discounts that can work as well. But Charlie, I'd be misleading you, we'd be misleading you if we led you to believe that there was a way for eBay to provide calculations for package size and even service. Just not possible unfortunately.

Brian: But I have a couple options. I'm encourage Charlie, encourage you to go check out the marketing tab and Seller Hub. Basically it's kind of like, hey, if you buy one, it's this much shipping. If you buy two, you get this much of a discount off the shipping and you can probably figure out if you were doing four, how could you, you get to make sure you got $18 out of that buyer in the course of buying four items.

Griff: And charging for shipping is not the way it's gonna work. Well because you're either gonna, you're gonna undercharge yourself or you're gonna overcharge a buyer who's gonna sit there and go, okay, I want a refund. And if you take it out of the equation, it just never enters the possibility of negotiation.

Brian: Good old free shipping.

Griff: Shipping. You know, I don't use it anymore except in those cases.

Brian: Oh really?

Griff: Yeah. If I have an item that I have multiple quantities and it's not something that's super expensive or super heavy or super huge, for example, I've got a listing up now for ten one ounce bottles of a rare discontinued cologne and it's free shipping. And that way if somebody, and I encourage them to buy more with volume pricing and I figured out in the price what I can charge and not lose money on shipping no matter what the scenario, but maybe make some money. And that's what it's all about. This next question on our queue, Brian was emailed to podcast@ebay.com by seller Wei. And Wei writes, Hey Griff. Hey Brian. Happy new year. With the new year. I have new questions. I think I found an error with the eBay update or something. Hmm. I just sold an item today and the customer didn't pay immediately. So I was dumbfounded at how did something sell without payment as I have all my items set to require immediate payment with Buy It Now. Will come to find out that this was an item I've added within the last two months and it had payments managed by eBay and the payment preference selected but not the required immediate payment selected. So of course I updated it and wondered if I had other items that I had this error. I then found 10 other items with the same error he's calling it and all are items I remember adding in the last couple months. So when I went to the bulk editing tool, as I can't spend time to go through 600 items to check everyone, I found there was no option for bulk editing, the bulk editing tool to do this. I contacted a rep at eBay and they thought there should be, but couldn't help wondering have I found an error or is there another way to update all my listings to require immediate payment with Ben. So I don't fall into the issue of waiting for buyers to pay that usually don't pay. I haven't found it on any items listed six months ago or longer only items in the last couple months. PS already got a mug a long time ago, but if you have new swag our crew here would always love it. Thanks Wei. What do you think?

Brian: I think, I think you ought to be the first recipient of some new swag.

Griff: Well, yeah, okay. That aside ,

Brian: It sounds like Wei might not be using business policies.

Griff: That was my first thought, but I emailed him and I asked him, where are you using business policies? And I never heard back from him. So Wei we'll answer your question under the assumption that you aren't using business policies because, and I double checked this, you can edit the immediate pay feature in your listings using the Bulk Edit Tool. But I think it only works if you've already opted in for business policies. So that's the first thing. If you haven't done that, you wanna opt in for business policies. There's three types. There's return shipping and then payment. And I have one payment policy that I use and it's, you know, immediate pay and it's eBay payments. And then I use that across all my listings. So if I had the issue that you were having, and I don't know why, it could have been that those listings, you know, I double checked. There's no report of a bug of any sort. So what it sounds like to me, and I've actually heard of this from other sellers, they will create a new listing or a sell similar listing and there may not have been immediate pay and that'll carry over. And then when you create the listing, there's no immediate pay. I would opt into business policies, create a business policy for the payment policy that includes immediate payment. And when you go into the bulk editor, there is an option for editing the payment area. And one of them is to select the policy you want it changed to this policy. And one of them will be that policy that has immediate payment. That's the way to make sure that you've got this all together and not having to hunt and peck. If you're all Buy It Now, not auction listings, this should work if you have some auction listings before you edit them. You can sort your current active listings by format, whether it's auction or or fixed price. You wanna do that and then just edit all the fixed price because you can't really add immediate payment to an auction.

Brian: But there wasn't anything with Managed Payments that would've changed. There wasn't is listings. So like it's not, it's not a bug or an error. No, I think it's just how they got initially listed.

Griff: Exactly.

Brian: Well thank you for that question Wei and eBay seller Ronnie sent the following to podcast@ebay.com. Hi Griff and Brian, my name is Ronnie. I have been selling on eBay for a couple of years now and my store name is YOPicker307. I work as a grocery stalker full-time and do eBay part-time. And I listen to the podcast every night while throwing freight, love learning new things from y'all. I was wondering about keeping track on inventory. Now I log all inventory I buy of course. But was wondering if it is best to record inventory purchased as you purchase it or log it as it sells. I've heard people say they do both. Just wondering what is better in your opinions. Thanks Ronnie. Well, Ronnie, and I think that sounds like a great accounting question, doesn't it?

Griff: Yeah, it does. Ronnie, what you might wanna read up on is something called the cost of goods sold. You can search for that on the internet for example, and you are wise to record your inventory when you purchase it. That's what most sellers including myself do. And that's in order to keep a record of things like the date you purchase, the amount of cost and where you bought it from the location for example. I also use this as a moment to, and a lot of sellers do this, record where the inventory is stored at your business. So you can find it easily when you wanna list it. And then if it sells, you can, you know, grab it. I think what we're talking about here, and we don't get too deep into this because we're not the experts, is there's two accounting methods that the IRS recognizes for retail sellers like you and I. And that's the accrual and the cash basis. I would read up on those. If you haven't done so yet, I would advise you to consult with a tax expert to determine which one works best for you. The rules were pretty cut and dry up until a few years ago. If you sold on eBay for example, and you sold products that you bought to resell, you kind of had to do it as one method. And I believe that was the accrual. But that meant that you could only declare the cost of goods for a year that the item sold. So you didn't, you knew what the cost of the good was, you had that recorded, but you didn't get to actually utilize it as a cost of good expense until the item sold. And with a cash basis you were able to do that when you purchase the item as an expense. And recently the IRS has loosened those rules and now they allow for a lot more leeway. Doesn't matter what your business is so that if you're starting a new business, you can decide which one's gonna work for you and take that, even if it's reselling property like most people on eBay do. But it sounds to me Brian, like that's what Ronnie is asking about those two methods. So again, it depends on how you account for your business when it comes to filing taxes.

Brian: But I do think best practice though is count for it when you purchase it. You know, because then you, you're tracking the date you purchased it, as well as the cost of the item when you purchased it. You then have that information.

Griff: But he's doing the right thing by, he says log it. I'm assuming he's recording all that data. When I was selling mostly shirts, I would get them from thrift stores and what I would do is on the tag that was on the shirt, which showed the price, I would then write the date and then I would write any discount. And usually the tag indicated where it came from, whether it was Goodwill or Savers. If it was an estate sale, I'd create a little tag and I would put it on the shirt with a pen and then I would photograph those and have that information ready. When I went to list the item, I would have that information ready and then I would take a picture of the tag. And in the custom label field when I was listing the item, I would put that information in. And Ronnie, you may not have heard us talk about this, but way back in episode 183 of this podcast, I talked about a method for recording all of this data in the custom label field in a way that shows up on your report, the eBay sales report that you can download, which is a comma separated value file that you can open in any spreadsheet and how you can then split that one column into, I use four different data fields within one column separated by commas and it really works. And now I have for every item when I purchased it, where it's stored, from what locale, like right now I all my purchases are online. I buy from either eBay or another marketplace. And so it has that information and then the cost and that comes in really handy.

Brian: And so just to be clear, so what you do is you take the custom label field and you put a piece of data, comma piece of data. So like you put $29.99, let's say it's the price first, comma, , maybe the date. Maybe the location. And then that'll all come in. But then you can easily separate those into separate fields.

Griff: And we go into great detail on that in episode 183.

Brian: Good advice for him. Check out 183.

Griff: And continue recording your inventory, purchase data in the way that works best for you so you can quickly indicate the cost of goods sold in your records and ultimately in your tax filings for the previous year. And in the meantime, we always advise people to consult with a tax expert. And finally, Brian, our last question for this week was sent to podcast@ebay.com by seller Mike and he says, Good day gentlemen. I say to you, good day gentlemen! My name is Mike Ellis. I tried out seeing if I could sell internationally when I post something to sell on eBay. I heard you talk about last month. Well guess what? I sold an item to someone in Taiwan. Wow!

Brian: . Congrats.

Griff: So my question is, I picked the eBay shipping service. It would be really, and I'm assuming he means the Global Shipping Program or eBay International Delivery. It would be really great if you guys talked about what goes on when an item is shipped overseas with the eBay service. I believe this would be interesting. My little business is called Wet Chicken In The Window. .

Brian: We've had some creative names from our questionnaires this week. Wet Chicken In The Window. I love it. Wet Chicken In The Window flippers.

Griff: Yeah, I guess that's what they are. They're flippers.

Brian: I'm gonna have to look it up.

Griff: All right, Mike, how do you tell us your name is Wet Chicken In The Window and you don't tell us why that name? How can you not tell us?

Brian: It must be the flippers.

Griff: That still doesn't mean, I meanWet Chicken In The Window. It's not appetizing is it? I'll have the wet chicken in the window shivering. Anyway, he wants an eBay podcast mug or any kind of swag. He's not picky. Love the podcast sign, Mike. Well, okay. Mug is on its way. , I had to email him by the way. He didn't send me his address. Good look, if you want a mug, you gotta give us your street address.

Brian: I'm curious about Wet Chicken In The Window still.

Griff: How much is that wet chicken in the window? (singing)

Brian: There are images for wet chicken in the window. If you do a Google search.

Griff: There is something?

Brian: Well that was the first thing. It was wet chicken in the windows.

Griff: What does it stand?

Brian: I don't know. It's just there wet chickens in the window. Griff, this sounds like this really sounds like a question for you.

Griff: It does, doesn't it? So Mike, when you ship a parcel through one of the eBay International shipping warehouses, this is what happens, and I know this is the case for the global shipping program. So the package goes to a warehouse for global shipping. I think almost all of them go to Kentucky Airliner. And then you ship there once it's received, tracking shows that it's been received and then your job is over. You don't have to worry about anything. It's on eBay. Now I visited the warehouse in its early days. I hear it's grown exponentially, but there are conveyor belts that these items go onto that separates them, scans them, prints out a new label based on the destination to where it'll end up. Cuz you don't see that on the label that you print out as a seller. And then these packages get cued and this long bank of what looks like cash registered at a grocery store and there's a clerk or representative sitting at each of the stations and it's their job to carefully open the package, which they do with the utmost skill. I watched them do this and was quite impressed. And they have to inspect to see what's in the package to make sure that what's on the invoice. Cause they can see that information is printed for them is what's inside so that someone isn't shipping something that may be prohibited to the country. It's going and they wanna make sure it's intact. It's not broken. They carefully seal the package up and then they are sorted into, and I forget the name for these, I should have remembered these huge, huge bins and each one has a country name on it. And when that bin gets filled up, it's moved out to the loading dock and put onto a UPS truck that takes it to the nearby Kentucky Lexington Airport where it is then shipped to that country and that package, because of the way it's set up, eBay is acting as a kind of brokerage, which is the way that FedEx or UPS work, not USPS. So that it bypasses customs because their custom fees or duties have already been assessed and paid and it goes directly to the distribution center for that country where it is then delivered to the person's door. That's how it works. I think it's a little different for eBay's Standard International Delivery that still goes through customs. You ship to a warehouse and then eBay is responsible from that point on. But those don't, it's on a brokerage service and I believe that the, there's a buyer still might have to pay customs and duties in order to get the item delivered.

Brian: If they didn't pay for 'em at the time of purchase.

Griff: Exactly. But both services are guaranteed on the seller end and both are good. Some people prefer one to the other. I love Global Shipping. It is so easy.

Brian: It's just convenient to me. It's like I don't have to worry about anything.

Griff: Anyway, uh, that's how that works currently. Mike. That's a brief outline of the journey your package takes when you ship it through like the Global Shipping Program.

Brian: And I assume that once the recently announced upgrade to International Shipping called Export 2.0 is fully released. We will update how the process works.

Griff: Yes, of course we will. Well, Brian, that was it. It's our sixth and last question.

Brian: Wow, that was fun.

Griff: Yeah, I thought so.

Brian: Six was good. Let's see if we can get six more listeners for next week. Yeah. If you have a question that you're itching to ask, why not call it in to us here at (8 8 😎 723-4630.

Griff: That's (8 8 😎 723-4630. You can call that hotline anytime of the day, any day of the week at your convenience, like over a cup of coffee from your eBay for Business podcast mug. Leave a question or comment and who knows, you could be famous and on the air.

Brian: And if you're not a calling the phone phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: And now it's time for your three point podcast list of reminders.

Brian: Check the announcement board at ebay.com/announcements for up to date Seller News every day.

Griff: Yeah. I don't wanna scare you with the second reminder, but you have about 10 more weeks before tax filing. Don't be like me and procrastinate. Get all your documents in order right now and fill out your scheduled C forms today, sooner, not later. Then you're ready when April 15th rolls around.

Brian: I feel like you're speaking directly to me about that stuff Griff.

Griff: , I'm speaking to myself.

Brian: Need to review anything in this episode? It's easy. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: Yeah. And that's at community.ebay.com podcast. You'll find the transcripts for each of the episodes on our next episode. It's all about fashion, specifically selling fashion, so you're not gonna wanna miss that.

Brian: We'd like to again, thank our guests this week. Mark Jaeger of TaxAct and of course our very own Georgea Mpampanis.

Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.