Auctionbytes on the proposal to require tax IDs:
Quote:Will this turn off sellers who don't want to give their tax ID numbers to online marketplaces? If so, will this hurt marketplaces and give consumers less of a selection of goods? Might it help larger professional sellers (whose tax ID is often different from their social security number) by weeding out more casual sellers?
Will individuals (as opposed to business sellers) give marketplaces like eBay their social security number, and if so, can marketplaces assure that those numbers are kept safe from hackers and scammers? Might we see a slew of new phishing email scams that trick sellers into revealing their social security numbers?...
full article:
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i21/s02
Quote:Will individuals (as opposed to business sellers) give marketplaces like eBay their social security number, and if so, can marketplaces assure that those numbers are kept safe from hackers and scammers?
A better question is will people be dumb enough to give their social security numbers to sites like Wagglepop that hide their ownership, or to the countless small auction sites started by "powersellers" who don't know the first thing about web server security? I sure wouldn't.
That's why god made tax ID numbers - although I'm not sure I'd trust WP even with that.
I'd post my SSN HERE before I'd give it to eBay.
Quote:Americans who sell items through Internet auction sites could be in for an unpleasant surprise at tax time next year, thanks to an IRS proposal designed to identify taxpayers who don't report income from those sales.
The U.S. Treasury Department wants Congress to force auction sites like eBay, Amazon.com and uBid.com to turn over the identities and Social Security numbers of a large portion of their users to the IRS--so tax collectors know how much each person made through online selling...
...the proposal is likely to encounter stiff opposition from Internet auction aficionados, free-market advocates and the auction Web sites themselves, not all of which are large enough to be able to comply with the rules without financial hardship...
full article:
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6176041.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news
Quote:Americans who sell items through Internet auction sites could be in for an unpleasant surprise at tax time next year, thanks to an IRS proposal designed to identify taxpayers who don't report income from those sales.
If they're stupid enough not to report their income