Ebay sales and losses

[erndisney]

Hi, I have over 30,000 in Ebay sales.  I was selling personal items that I have had collected for many years. I opened a store in March , and decided to try and make a business out of this. 

 As I stated lots of these sales were from personnel collections, and some were from new products I purchased to resell.

 My question is since I need to report the amount of sales, how can I add in the costs of the personnel items and separate the losses from the gains.  

 I will have a loss of the totals since I bought lots of the personal items and saved them for years and now they sell for much less they I paid for them. 

 Also how do I show the costs that EBay took from the sales, along with shipping costs. I will have a large loss, and want to be sure I'm doing it correctly, so in future years I wont have any issues.

 Thanks

[JamesG1]

The sales reported from your business would be reported as self-employment income and reported on Schedule C Profit or Loss From Business.  Or you may establish a business entity to report that income and expense.

The sale of personal items is reported on Schedule D / Form 8949.

IRS Publication 525, page 36, states:

Sale of personal items

If you sold an item you owned for personal use, such as a car, refrigerator, furniture, stereo, jewelry, or silverware, your gain is taxable as a capital gain. Report it as explained in the Instructions for Schedule D (Form 1040). You can't deduct a loss.

A spreadsheet would track date of purchase, date of sale, purchase price, selling price, shipping costs and selling expenses and would identify personal items sold for gain versus personal items sold for loss.

Schedule D / Form 8949 will allow you to report expenses related to sales such as shipping fees and Ebay fees.