A few questions about taxes. Need help badly.

[rainbowx1994]

Hi there my name is Brittany and recently I have wanted to start to sell my stuff online. However though, there is like a million things running through my head about taxes and stuff. I do need help on this really bad if I am gonna sell. Now keep in mind that I am from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada so laws might be different. 

1. Do I need a business license to sell stuff? 

2. Do I need to charge sales taxes for other Provinces or States? 

3. Do I need to report all my money I make as income tax and what do I fill out?

I have been trying to research a lot of this and unfortunately, Google is not too kind to me for answers and I ask all of this because I don't wanna get in trouble with the law which is making me quite paranoid. If I think of more questions I will sure to ask more later on.

Help will be much appreciated. Thanks!

[ypdc_dennis]

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@rainbowx1994 wrote:

1. Do I need a business license to sell stuff? 

2. Do I need to charge sales taxes for other Provinces or States? 

3. Do I need to report all my money I make as income tax and what do I fill out?

 

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1. If selling personal stuff, no.

2. If having more than $30,000 in sales in a 12 month period you must register to collect GST/HST in Canada. Under that total you don't need to register. When selling from Canada you do not collect sales tax outside Canada.

3. Keep track of your income and expenses, you have income tax on the profit. Line 135 on the T1 General.

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[rainbowx1994]

Thanks a lot!

[momcqueen]

Before you start selling, you need to do some buying here. This serves two purposes.

One is that it will give you much-needed experience using the site and allow you to see good customer service and bad customer service from other ebay sellers. The other reason is that you need a feedback count that is higher than zero in order to install confidence in your buyers. And to not draw attention of buyers with less ethical intentions. New users are easy targets for fraud. 

I give this advice to every new member that comes here to ask for advice on the how-to's of ebay selling. I had a feedback count of 177 as a buyer when I started to sell and felt like I knew a lot about ebay but I really knew nothing about selling here. It's a steep learning curve. Read all the tutorials that ebay offers and take their advice to heart. And, of course, feel free to return to ask questions.

Good luck. 

[reallynicestamps]

Keep track of all your costs and income, but until you are getting near that $30K mark, taxes are really not a worry.

Shipping is.

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1

Play with this entering various weights and measures.

Use 90210 as a default US zipcode, but only because it is fairly easy to remember.

USE METRIC. Canada Post went metric in 1974 and any other measurements are inaccurate. (Inaccurate means 'will lose you money')

We get discounts when we buy shipping labels though.

At the moment there is a switchover from Paypal labels to Shippo and SnapShip (Canada Post) with all the usual confusion.

Our colleague ypdcdennis answered one quesion here:

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Who-has-the-best-deal-on-US-shipping-right-now/m-p/377678

and dennis has become the goto guy for postage questions.

He's been very helpful.

Keep asking questions. We busybodies Boardies don't really have lives.