Starting January 2025, Ebay Canada to require SIN number for all sellers with more than 30 sales?

[joycroe_0]

I was reading this article on Ebay and it states that as of January 2025, anyone with over 30 sales will have to provide a SIN number. 
https://www.ebay.ca/help/account/regulatory/sales-reporting/canada-digital-sales-reporting?id=5476#s...

It seems like quite a drastic update and I'm surprised more people haven't been talking about it.

[alpinestars91]

I guess where I am being hung up is some of what feels like conflicting info. On one hand eBay is going to  send my sales info to the CRA once I cross that $2800 threshold and they will send it with no other context from what I can see. It appears to me (I could be wrong) that that in effect forces me to now report all of this as income.

On the other hand both eBay and the CRA's website both say that personal items that do not yield a capital gain (everything I buy and sell is under $1000) does not need to be reported.

So it seems like if I go with route 1 it would appear like I am conceding this this is business income because I do not see anywhere on the forms where I would caveat that this is a personal collection with no capital gain.

And if I go route 2 and don't report CRA will find a discrepancy between the income I reported and this report eBay is sending off. Would I have to wait for CRA to actually send me a letter before I clarify that I am not running a reselling business but rather buy too much personal stuff that I need to unload later?

[flipistics]

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@alpinestars91 wrote:

I guess where I am being hung up is some of what feels like conflicting info. On one hand eBay is going to  send my sales info to the CRA once I cross that $2800 threshold and they will send it with no other context from what I can see. It appears to me (I could be wrong) that that in effect forces me to now report all of this as income.

On the other hand both eBay and the CRA's website both say that personal items that do not yield a capital gain (everything I buy and sell is under $1000) does not need to be reported.

So it seems like if I go with route 1 it would appear like I am conceding this this is business income because I do not see anywhere on the forms where I would caveat that this is a personal collection with no capital gain.

And if I go route 2 and don't report CRA will find a discrepancy between the income I reported and this report eBay is sending off. Would I have to wait for CRA to actually send me a letter before I clarify that I am not running a reselling business but rather buy too much personal stuff that I need to unload later?

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Why don't you phone the CRA and ask them?

[recped]

eBay reports Gross Revenue, you deduct all expenses and the Net amount is what is potentially taxable.

One thing, it's a bad idea to combine personal sales and business sales, it will cause the confusion you have and the issues you may have when reporting income on your tax return.

That said, the reporting that eBay does is not the same as the T4 or T5 you get for employment or investment income. Those are hard numbers that report exact income, the reporting eBay does is different.

If you want clarification then contact CRA.

[alpinestars91]

So I gave CRA a call (long wait times though) and managed to clarify some things... kind of.

Long story short....  quite a bit of grey area.

Long story long... I had to be transferred to the business wing of CRA in regards to my eBay questions. First off they seemed oblivious to this 30 transactions/$2800 threshold. The agent and I agreed these are fairly low thresholds and she kept returning to $30K+ in yearly sales where I will need to register and submit taxes. Advised her I never approach that figure and that eBay handles all remittence of sales tax for me.

I explained that after reviewing all of their articles and even listening their podcast episode I was still unclear on where I stand as a collector or hobbyist. Selling my comic books, video games, blu-rays etc is not something I do from a profit motive - these are things I buy for myself and either change my mind or if I need to pay bills/life events/next hobby purchase I sell parts of my collection. Sometimes I manage to make more if the item had become more scare or in demand between the time I bought it and when I sold it, sometimes it is worth less. 

She readily understood this and also acknowledged the sale of personal properity under $1000 (which all of my buying and selling on eBay would be in the range of) is not a capital gain either and is not taxable income. But she couldn't give clear cut and definitive answer on what I should do either way, which is understandable. 

Our conversation came down to volume of sales and dollar amounts. I estimated that on the low end maybe $3000-4000 a year and at the high end up to $6000-7000 depending on what I sold. I explained what I did and she likened it to how people with large clothing collections (shopoholics in other words, which I am guilty of) sell their personal clothing on poshmark. I agreed that it was like that. I do not view my listings as inventory as I have often paid well in excess of retail prices based on scarcity for some of these things - it's more along the lines of what I would put on kijiji but to a wider audience on eBay.

In effect she told me not to lose sleep over the amounts I was describing. When I returned to the eBay communication and read to her what it said she seemed to kind of get what they are doing and said that they are increasing their visibility but that this seems to be more about to identifying high volume professional sellers who are not reporting sales or income at all. 

So obviously still in a grey area but beginning to think I am over thinking this. 

[marnotom!]

@alpinestars91and others, I've done some poking around online and I've found some interesting information on the CRA website.  It appears that CRA is now referring to eBay as part of what it terms the "platform economy," where one is involved in peer to peer sales using technology and an intermediary to facilitate the transactions.

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/compliance/platform...

Once again, I’m no accountant or tax expert, but I think it’s important to keep in mind the wording of the declaration we sign at the end of a tax return.  We are declaring that our return contains information on “income from all sources”.  My interpretation of this when it comes to income derived from the platform economy is that we declare this income, then do the paperwork within (or outside) the return to show why this income isn't subject to taxation.  We create paper trails for ourselves, basically.

It's like those word problems we used to have to do in math class at school.  We weren't supposed to just put down the answer to the question, but we had to "show our thinking" and demonstrate how we arrived at that answer.

I agree that for smaller amounts, this hardly seems necessary, but if you don't declare your eBay income on your return and something gets triggered to prompt an audit sometime down the line, you're going to be scrambling to get this information together, so to me it makes more sense to do it right the first time.

More information here:

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/compliance/platform...

[alpinestars91]

thanks  @marnotom!, I read many of those same articles and still not quite sure how to square personal items being sold (not taxable income if buying/selling under $1000) vs. "report all sources of income".

I would assume they mean all sources of "taxable income", and so selling an a personal item for $200 that you paid $170 for does not yield any capital gain and therefore is not taxable.

The wrench in this is eBay now reporting based on these blanket thresholds and trying to understand what sellers who sell personal items need to do about it. What does that reporting even look like and what does it mean? Still no clarity.