Your article, “The Big Sell Off’, on helping people to sell their unwanted purchases/stuff at home in eBay to help to pay off their debts is wonderful advice.

Can I have your permission to use it to submit this article to various Article Marketing sites to help thousands of those who are in debts? I will submit this article in full (without any change in text) and I will mention that this article is written by you. Please give me your pemission to submit your article.

Best regsrds.

Gordon Phua
Email: gordonphua@gmail.com

selling on amazon can take awhile, give yourself a good wide window and most importantly ship stuff out on time! your rating is valuable. I also think selling on amazon is a lot easier than dealing with ebay and you will probably find that at least one item you have is worth rather a LOT more than you thought! who knew that Blancmange CD I bought 20 years ago for a buck at the used CD shop would bring $45? I sure didn’t! I guess whatever doesn’t sell you could put up on ebay as a bulk buy but I never did that.

downside is amazon take a healthy commission, but there’s no listing fee either, and you’ll become friends with the local post office clerks since you can’t put that stuff in a mailbox.

the wait can be kinda long, but if you list for the lowest price, items can sell relatively quickly. Maybe list for 2 months, then donate everything that doesn’t sell.

Now I just have a shelf of books and CDs at home that I can read when I want, until they sell.
This does require frequent trips to the post office and some time packaging books, but its worth it for me.

Thanks Bob for the secondspin.com advice. I just made $33 on cds that were never going to sell on half.com

“Maybe I’ll use this extra length of cat5″ (reasonable)
“Maybe I’ll use this old length of fiber” (Not quite reasonable)
“Maybe I’ll use this ISA SCSI card” (Umm…)

And yet, I still have them

D.B.

I’m not an accountant, but I’m pretty sure you only need to consider profit as income, so if you bought your stuff and are likely selling it at a loss, then it shouldn’t be considered income.

From the IRS website:
Did You Have an Online Garage Sale?
If your online auction sales are the Internet equivalent of an occasional garage or yard sale, you generally do not have to report the sales. In a garage sale, you generally sell household items you purchased over the years and used personally. If you paid more for the items than you sell them for, the sales are not reportable. Losses on personal use property are not deductible, either.

If you are selling many things that have appreciated significantly, then you will have to report it as income (baseball card collections may count, but be sure you don’t forget how much it actually cost to buy them all in the first place).

Either way, I would say, for the average person, the tax liability of “The Big Sell-Off” is zero.

I am not a tax professional. So be sure to check with your tax professional before listening to what I say.

Just do not get scared off by well meaning advice that does not give the whole picture.

That is only true if you are making a profit on those items. But, you do need to maintain some sort of record for what you paid for these items to demonstrate that you sold them for the same or less than you paid. This should not be much of an issue for most folks if you buy things on credit cards (since you can pull old statements to prove it).

I live in FLA and have seen many many garage sales recently. I’ve even seen homeowners stripping expensive items from their homes before the bank takes over (such as home theater systems, intercom systems, built in music systems, etc.) since many of these items “dopnt convey” in a BK. Kind of sad to see, but it will help many of these folks repay some debt.

My friend was audited by the IRS and had huge penalties for not paying taxes on his Ebay sales.

The auditors told him that even garage sale proceeds should be claimed as income.

SOrry to rain on the parade here, but if you are making any kind of “decent” money on this type of selling, you should think about the day the IRS truck pulls out outside. They look at EVERY SINGLE DEPOSIT you make in your bank account and ask where the money came from.

I think that an energy efficient fridge or air conditioner is a better starting place. CFLs can be dropped in piece by piece when funds become available.

We also operate a thrift store to benefit small, local nonprofits – and like other shops, would love to have donations of CD’s, DVD’s – even VHS tapes (one of the biggest sellers as many people still have VCR’s).

A great way to locate consignment shops near you is http://www.howtoconsign.com – gives you lots of hints and tips on how to clean out, de-clutter and cash in! If you haven’t been in a consignment shop before, or in a long time, you don’t know what you’re missing! As an industry, we’ve come a long way in the last 10 or 15 years!

Consignment shops are also a great place to visit first when you are looking for something – why buy new when you can help ‘recycle’ something, save money and ‘Do Good’ for the planet too?

We sell everything – even baseball cards!