I hope this is the right forum for this.
As some of you know, Ebay is now required to get your SS# and send a 1099 form if you sell more than $600 in the year and this must be reported as income. I want to establish a value of the materials and labor cost to get a saw in running or restored condition in order to deduct it. In some cases, it will have been several years since I worked on the saw. If I hadn't kept records at the time, any ideas on how to document this? For hourly labor charge, I was going to use the same rate as a local saw dealer and add cost of primer, paint, and any other materials used. For actual time, I was going to tear down a saw and estimate time to strip, bead blast, locate parts, re-paint and re-assemble. I'm guessing I would have around 20 - 30 hours in a saw, does this sound right?
"does this sound right?"
There is a business management section. Might try there and get a different bunch of commenters.
Does Ebay have help discussion groups kind of like a forum as in here to pursue this on?
First off There must be some schedule code to fill out. Like a work sheet. Schedule c is self-employment not sure if that would be it or another. Documentation is for an audit. Fill in the boxes or have your cpa do it is all needed to file. Perhaps there is a line to say the Ebay sales (or the stuff on those 1099 forms) were stuff you have more invested in than received.
You would have expenses and sales. Figure out how much you make an hour off of that. I suppose you could lease yourself space but charging off hourly labor? ok if it is someone else and you do payroll (if it is you then that counts as income right?). After 5 years of losses, it supposedly gets harder.
Do you need to be licensed with the consumer protection in your state to do this business?
What is your tax bracket, and will it end up better to take the standard deduction anyway? Maybe I am off here. Do you have a cpa do your taxes now?
Some of this tends to incentivize doing all your expenses via a card that can track them. Actually, what became law was pretty tame compared to some original text.
Are not you really going to do enough cash business so as to never show a profit even if one exists?
and you do payroll