Selling Items on an Online Auction Site

So you’ve done some spring cleaning and found some extra items that made you some cash on one of the popular auction sites online, such as eBay. If you’ve sold anything on one of these sites, you may be curious to know how it will affect you at tax time.

Let’s say you sold roughly $1,950 in jewelry on eBay. How you are taxed depends on whether or not you sold the jewelry as a business. If so, you’ll need to file a Schedule C, which is used by self-employed taxpayers.

Otherwise, if the jewelry was just extra clutter that you wanted to get rid of, you’d count the sale as a capital gain and file a Schedule D.