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    Did You Sell Concert Tickets or Clothes? You May Owe Taxes

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    If you received more than $5,000 for online sales of “goods or services” in 2024, you might get a Form 1099-K. Don’t ignore it, an expert says.If you sold personal items like concert tickets or used clothing online last year or received money for services through payment apps, you may get an unfamiliar tax form this year.A tax law change means most online marketplaces and payment apps must send the Internal Revenue Service a form called a 1099-K, with a copy to you, if you received more than $5,000 in payments for “goods or services” in 2024. That’s down from a threshold of $20,000 in payments and more than 200 transactions. (Starting in 2024, the number of transactions no longer matters.)“As the threshold keeps going down, it catches more people,” said Melanie Lauridsen, vice president for tax policy and advocacy at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.Under the old cutoff, the forms mostly went to people running active businesses rather than to occasional or small-time sellers. “This substantial drop in the reporting thresholds could result in millions more taxpayers receiving Forms 1099 this filing season than in prior years,” according to a blog post by Erin M. Collins, the national taxpayer advocate, who leads a group within the I.R.S. that works on behalf of taxpayers.Here’s what to know about Form 1099-K:Who’s eligible to receive Form 1099-K?If you bought several concert tickets, for example, and resold them online at a markup, you could potentially meet the 2024 threshold for getting the form, Ms. Collins said in an interview. Tickets for big-name concerts, she said, such as performances by Taylor Swift, have reportedly sold for more than $1,000 per ticket. If the seller made money, the gain is taxable.The rule doesn’t apply to personal payments, like gifts or transfers of money to friends and family, the I.R.S. says. If you and a friend go to a concert, and your friend pays you for the ticket using a payment app, “you should not receive a Form 1099-K for the reimbursement and, generally, it would not be taxable,” according to “common situations” described on the agency’s website.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      UK marketplace sellers face ‘second Brexit’ hit from Trump’s US import rules

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      Many UK-based independent sellers on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon could suffer a significant hit to US sales from planned changes to import rules under Donald Trump, with experts comparing the impact to a second Brexit.The new rules, which mean all parcels originating or made in China and being sold into the US must pay import duty – of as much as 15% on fashion items – and an additional 10% tariff, are also expected to impact bigger online clothing retailers such as Asos and Boohoo.The changes were introduced at the start of February in an attempt to protect US retailers from a surge in competition from the likes of Chinese online marketplaces Shein and Temu, but were indefinitely paused after the US customs service struggled to cope with the massive increase in parcels requiring checks last week.However, they are expected to be implemented within the coming months, potentially driving up prices for US consumers and hitting sales for online retailers.Before the change, parcels with a value of less than $800 (£635) shipped to individuals in the US were exempt from import tax and did not pass through the usual customs checks. That scheme, originally designed to help smooth online shopping, is being revoked after it emerged that the number of shipments under the “de minimis” rules had ballooned to more than 1bn, valued at $54.5bn by 2023 – most of them from China or Hong Kong via firms including Shein and Temu.“You are looking at an increase of $30 to $50 per consignment [group of parcels],” said Brad Ashton at the advisory firm RSM. “It is creating a perfect storm for online retailers putting goods into the US market. It has a lot of the hallmarks of Brexit in terms of its potential impact on small traders.“Businesses will see their margins eroded because costs will increase. We may get to a point where the changes make a UK business uncompetitive in selling to the US.”The widespread use of Chinese factories for many British brands, particularly in fashion, means businesses such as Asos and Boohoo will be drawn in, as well as many UK independent marketplace sellers.It will not just affect goods made in China and then sent from the UK, but potentially a much wider array, as any package containing even one product made in China may have to pay import tax and pass through customs checks, further increasing costs, according to experts.There is also an expectation that the de minimis rules will eventually be scrapped for all imports, no matter their origin.About $5bn worth of parcels were exported to the US from the UK under de minimis rules in 2021, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis of data from US Customs and Border Protection. About 80% of that was estimated to be related to online retail, with fashion likely to be a large proportion of it.Chris White, at the logistics company Fulfilmentcrowd, said that during the brief period when the rules were in place in early February, one-third of the parcels it shipped to the US from the UK were found to be of Chinese origin and subject to the new taxes.Fast-fashion specialists Asos and Boohoo sell about £300m of clothing a year to the US. Both are already struggling to compete with the rise of Shein and high street retailers, which have revived after the Covid pandemic. John Stevenson, a retail analyst at Peel Hunt, said Asos and Boohoo would have to “adjust prices or take a view on [the] profitability of operating in the US”.As well as the higher tax charges, customs checks required after the rule change will add as much as two days to the processing of orders, making UK retailers less competitive with US-based operators on the speed of delivery.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStevenson said the hit to Asos and Boohoo was “not business-critical” in the way it could be for Shein or Temu, which he believed were heavily reliant on the tax benefit, but that it would have an impact.In the short term, online sellers will probably have lower sales because of uncertainty among US shoppers over possible taxes. White said that during the period when the new rules were in place, similar parcels were loaded with different levels of duty as local customs officers made different decisions.He said a further element of the rule change might be to expose brands that were “trading on an image of being British or European” as being “made in China and not Savile Row”, potentially damaging their appeal.There would be “lots of crossed fingers and puzzled faces” over the changes in legislation, with retailers potentially opening more US warehousing or, longer term, to switch sources of supply, White added.Boohoo closed its US warehouse earlier this year, and Asos is scheduled to close its facility there in November. However, a reversal could be on the cards if the de minimis rules are confirmed. Many fast-fashion companies have already diversified their supply chains – making more in India, Bangladesh or Turkey. Trump’s tax changes could accelerate this further.Shein is reportedly incentivising Chinese suppliers to set up in Vietnam, according to a report by Bloomberg.It is not clear when the new rules might be implemented as the US tries to put the technology and workforce in place to handle the new system. Experts say it could take weeks or months.While there is a chance that Trump will change his mind, as he has done on tariffs with Canada and Mexico, no business can bet on which way the US might jump. More

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      in Elections

      Amazon Sued Over Slow Deliveries to Low-Income Areas

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      The District of Columbia’s attorney general said the company deliberately outsourced Prime member deliveries in certain ZIP codes.The attorney general of the District of Columbia sued Amazon on Wednesday, accusing it of violating consumer protection laws by making slower deliveries to Prime members in historically lower-income neighborhoods.In one of the first complaints of its kind, which was filed with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Amazon had deliberately and secretly stopped its fastest delivery service to the nearly 50,000 Prime subscribers in certain ZIP codes that were lower-income neighborhoods.According to the lawsuit, Amazon has used third parties like United Parcel Service and the Postal Service to make Prime deliveries in those areas for the past two years. That resulted in slower deliveries than those made by Amazon’s own delivery drivers, who serve other Washington residents.Amazon “cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another,” Mr. Schwalb said in a statement. “We’re suing to stop this deceptive conduct and make sure District residents get what they’re paying for.”Amazon told Mr. Schwalb that it had made the change because of safety concerns in those neighborhoods, the attorney general said. He said the company had violated consumer protection laws by failing to disclose the change to consumers.Amazon said that it disagreed that it had deceived customers and that it had informed Prime subscribers in those areas about each stage of the delivery process. The company said it tried to work with the office of the attorney general to support crime prevention and improve safety for drivers in those areas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      With Discounts on Offer, Shoppers Seem to Bite

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      Early data on online spending this week shows consumers are being drawn to discounts. A clearer picture of Black Friday sales, including in-store spending, will emerge in the days ahead.For weeks, businesses have been sending consumers endless offers of discounts on all sorts of items. Finally, on this long weekend, it appears that consumers bit.Preliminary data released on Friday suggests that Americans took advantage of big deals on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, opening their wallets, though they were selective about what they bought.Consumers spent $7.9 billion in online shopping on Friday, an increase of 8.2 percent compared with last year, according to incomplete numbers from Adobe Analytics. That’s on top of $6.1 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, around 9 percent more than the previous year. The increases were driven by large discounts on items like toys, electronics and apparel. These numbers offer an early look at how the holiday shopping season has gone so far. The Adobe data doesn’t include in-store buying. Mastercard will release data that includes in-store sales on Saturday, and the National Retail Federation is set to update its figures on the holiday shopping season next week.Ahead of the holiday weekend, as retailers issued forecasts for the coming months, they painted a picture of shoppers who have grown choosy, holding off on large purchases after years of faster-than-usual price increases and with interest rates still high.“Consumers have been waiting all of 2024 for this moment to buy the goods they want and need at a lower price, and they seem to be pleased with the discounts they’re seeing this week,” said Caila Schwartz, the director of consumer insights at Salesforce, which also tracks spending data.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Meta Fined $840 Million in Europe for Boosting Marketplace Unfairly

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      Meta said it would appeal the decision by the European Union, which said the company had abused its dominance in social networking to strengthen its shopping and classified ads service.​The European Union on Thursday fined Meta roughly $840 million for breaking competition laws with Facebook Marketplace, its shopping and classified ads platform, the latest action by regulators trying to limit the ability of tech giants to expand into new product areas.In issuing the 800 million euro fine, European regulators said Meta had given itself an unfair advantage over rival services by bundling Marketplace into Facebook’s wider social network, providing it with immediate access to millions of potential users. They added that Meta had abused its dominance in online advertising to impose unfair business terms on rival shopping services, allowing it to collect data that could be used to strengthen Marketplace.European regulators, led by Margrethe Vestager, the E.U. competition chief, have for years sought to limit the ability of tech companies to use their power in one area, like social networking, to gain a foothold in new markets such as shopping. Authorities in Europe have also accused Apple of using its dominance in smartphones to bolster music and payment services.In linking Marketplace to Facebook’s social network, the company gave itself “advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement. “This is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behavior.”The company said it would appeal the decision, setting up a legal battle that could drag out for years. Meta said Marketplace, introduced in 2016, was created in response to consumer demand and had not hindered competition from companies such as eBay and Vinted.On Marketplace, people buy, sell and trade items with others, including furniture, clothing, sports equipment, cars and home goods.“Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Marketplace, and many don’t,” the company said in a statement. “The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to.”Meta has been a target of efforts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to crimp the power of the largest technology companies. Last year, the company was fined 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.26 billion, for violating regional data protection rules. In the United States, the company is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations.Whether the United States and Europe will stay aligned on tech regulation with President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to office is an open question. Some of his supporters, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have raised concerns about the power of Silicon Valley firms like Meta and Google, while others have pushed for less regulation.The European Union started the Marketplace investigation in 2019. In 2023, the company reached a settlement with British regulators on a similar case, but was unable to find an agreement with E.U. authorities. More

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      in US Politics

      Bitcoin price hits six-week high after Trump backs cryptocurrency

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      Bitcoin has hit its highest level in more than six weeks after Donald Trump said at the weekend he would end the “persecution” of the crypto industry if he wins the US presidential election.The cryptocurrency’s price rose by more than 3% on Monday to peak at about $69,745, the highest since 12 June when the currency changed hands at more than $69,800.The increase comes after supportive comments from Trump at the Bitcoin 2024 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, where he said on Saturday he would make the US the world’s cryptocurrency leader and embrace a more pro-bitcoin stance than his rival, Kamala Harris.The former president said: “I pledge to the bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s anti-crypto crusade will be over … If we don’t embrace crypto and bitcoin technology, China will, other countries will. They’ll dominate, and we cannot let China dominate. They are making too much progress as it is.”He also said he would sack the chair of the US financial watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on the first day of his presidency if he won the election. “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler,” Trump said, to cheers of approval from the audience.Gensler is a noted sceptic about cryptocurrencies, despite aiding them in January by approving exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – a basket of assets that can be bought and sold like shares on an exchange – that track the price of bitcoin.The SEC chair said in a statement approving the ETFs that bitcoin was a “speculative, volatile” asset used for illegal activities including ransomware and terrorist financing. Since 2023 the SEC has launched more than 40 crypto-related enforcement actions.Speaking at the bitcoin convention, Trump said he would establish a crypto presidential advisory council and create a national “stockpile” of bitcoin using cryptocurrency the US government held that was largely seized in law enforcement actions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said. “If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future.”The Financial Times also reported on Saturday that Harris’s advisers had approached top crypto companies to try to “reset” the relationship between the Democratic party and the sector. Approaches had been made to the Coinbase crypto exchange, the stablecoin company Circle and the blockchain payments group Ripple Labs, the FT said. More

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      in Elections

      Target Tests an A.I. Tool to Help Its Workers Aid Shoppers

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      The retailer is rolling out a chatbot to help workers answer questions from shoppers — and workers.Target is the latest retailer to put generative artificial intelligence tools in the hands of its workers, with the goal of improving the in-store experience for employees and shoppers.On Thursday, the retailer said it had built a chatbot, called Store Companion, that would appear as an app on a store worker’s hand-held device. The chatbot can provide guidance on tasks like rebooting a cash register or enrolling a customer in the retailer’s loyalty program. The idea is to give workers “confidence to serve our guests,” Brett Craig, Target’s chief information officer, said in an interview.Target is testing the device in 400 stores and plans to make the app available to most workers across its nearly 2,000 locations by August.As the retail industry experiments with generative A.I., some see its potential to eventually make in-store shopping feel more like online shopping, said Roy Singh, the global head of Bain & Co’s advanced analytics practice who works with retailers on generative A.I. initiatives.Retailers have personalized online shopping for customers with things like predictive technology, which suggests items to buy. Shoppers also see e-commerce as more convenient than having to walk in a store and track down workers. The Target app is meant to help workers assist shoppers with their questions faster.Mr. Craig is often asked if these sorts of tools will replace workers, he said. “I believe the relationship between people and technology is so very important,” he said. “We’re here to make sure that they get the right tools to do their work.”Walmart recently expanded access to the A.I. tool it had started using in its corporate offices last summer for use in its retail stores, rolling it out to 13,000 managers of its Sam’s Club stores.While there is significant investment and hype around generative A.I., some retailers have also rolled back experiments with the technology that have failed.“We are still in that growth curve — learning, failing and relearning — and trying to get through adoption at scale,” said Duleep Rodrigo, who leads the U.S. consumer and retail sector for KPMG. More

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      in Elections

      Teamsters Struggle to Unionize Amazon and FedEx Delivery Workers

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      The Teamsters union has made little headway in organizing workers at Amazon and FedEx despite wage and other gains it secured at UPS last year.Last year, two unions representing workers at three large automakers and UPS negotiated new labor contracts that included big raises and other gains. Leaders of the unions — the United Automobile Workers and the Teamsters — hoped the wins would help them organize workers across their industry.The U.A.W. won one vote to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee last month and lost one this month at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. The Teamsters have made even less progress at UPS’s big nonunion rivals in the delivery business, Amazon and FedEx.Polling shows that public support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. But labor experts said structural forces would make it hard for labor groups to increase their membership, which is the lowest it has been as a percentage of the total work force in decades. Unions also face stiff opposition from many employers and conservative political leaders.The Teamsters provide an instructive case study. Many of the workers doing deliveries for Amazon and FedEx work for contractors, typically small and medium-size businesses that can be hard to organize. And delivery workers employed directly by FedEx in its Express business are governed by a labor law that requires unions to organize all similar workers at the company nationally at once — a tougher standard than the one that applies to organizing employees at automakers, UPS and other employers.Some labor experts also said the Teamsters had not made as forceful a push as the U.A.W. to organize nonunion workers after securing a new contract with UPS.“You didn’t have that energy that you saw with the U.A.W.’s leaders,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      E-Commerce and the Influencer Economy

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      How internet shopping became choked with junk. People are bombarded online each day with ads for newfangled products that promise dramatic life improvements. Modish tumblers. Sleek pans. Miraculous cleaning solutions. Overblown air purifiers. Just click this link and — voilà! Productivity. Happiness. Nirvana.Don’t buy it.Wirecutter, The Times’s product recommendation service, tests many of the wares that clog Americans’ social media feeds. And while our testers do like some, these products are often built on empty promises. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how e-commerce, a $6 trillion global industry, became choked with junk.Paid to sellOnline shopping can expose people to a greasy influencer economy. Influencers often join affiliate-revenue networks, such as Amazon’s. When an influencer’s follower clicks a link and buys something, the influencer makes money. That’s why people on your social media feed are crowing about their 10 favorite Amazon finds or talking about how an expensive gizmo has changed their life.Many influencers have another incentive: Brands pay them to hawk stuff. Some people with large followings make deals for tens of thousands of dollars per post. Then, when enough people like or share a post, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube algorithms push it to more people. The result is a blizzard of gadgets.Consider these spin scrubbers, pitched online as the solution to all of your cleaning woes. “In videos, these devices churn up rings of soap suds, implying they are lifting away all the filth beneath them,” writes Ellen Airhart, Wirecutter’s cleaning expert.In reality, they’re the worst cleaning tools we’ve ever tested. Ellen spent six hours trying to scour a soap-scum-covered shower and a toothpaste-crusted sink with two spin scrubbers popular on TikTok. They splattered water everywhere and often cost upward of $50. Instead, Ellen recommends a humble $1 sponge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More