ebay powerseller chapter 7 help needed!

[needhelp9999]

Hi,
I'm live in the fl panhandle and am
cose to filing chapter 7, for over the past year I have been making a living selling my once huge personal baseball card collection on ebay. I was hoping to turn it into a business but it did not work out and did not. All the money I made selling my collection was used to pay credit card bills and just to get by. Late last year, my sales dropped and I couldn't meet the minimun CC payments anymore. I was unable to get a job and have been living off selling my remaining baseball cards and other personal items at a loss on ebay. I do maintain a poweseller status .
My attorney told me that this isn't a business yet I have a paypal premier business account and a paypal buyer credit card .
95 % of the stuff I sold was my personal stuff, less than 5% were stuff purchased on ebay to resell. None of my individual cards sold for over 500 dollars.
My attorney asked me to bring the paypal account papers for the signing but i'm getting a distinct sensation my attorney does not understand ebay/paypal.
As of next week, I will have run out of stuff to sell to keep myself afloat and cannot wait any longer to find the right job and will get whatever I can find.
My wife makes 40k a year, my ebay sales have been the sole source of income and were about $5k the last six months ,we can barely make
make ends meet, the creditors are calling constantly,my attorney has gotten over $2000.00 from me which has left me with nothing. I don't own anything except an old exempt car,
no property, nothing of value is left, 20 bucks in my bank account.
, I have to find any job no matter how overqualified I may be for it.
I'm anxoius 24 / 7 and feel like I don;t know my lawyer understands my case.
my question is based on what you see here, is it a problem that i've been living off my stuff for the past year ?
is my ebay considered a business ?
can i buy stuff to resell on ebay now ?
my lawyer is filing next week.
please, i need help !!!!!!

[cirnrab]

I see it as you are self employed.. Ebay is your JOB you sell stuff, and that's your income. So maybe that's what your lawyer is seeing it as..Hope that helps?

[morallyBR2]

I see it as you were selling your stuff to stay a float. I don't see a self employmeny issue at all. I wouldn't sweat it, it sounds like your lawyer knows what is going on. Just relax a little and drink a beer or something. I worried myself to death every day until my lawyer politely nudged me to trust her. Since then, it's been pretty smooth. Until your law dog actually F's up don't assume he is. You know what they say about "assume" You make an ass out of u and me. Not actually me in this case though

[Flamingo]

You are running a business on eBay. If you do it on a daily basis and generate income, you have a business. It's not like you are on there once a month selling the pair of new shoes you found in the back of your closet that have been there for 20 years.

You can print out all your sales and receipts from your seller's account on eBay to show your attorney and the same with payments received into your PayPal account for certain time periods. It might also help for you to print out eBay's seller information guidelines and also the same as to your PayPal Account to assist your attorney in understanding the auction/sales process on eBay and it's link to PayPal. Most attorneys and trustees are becoming more aware of the power of eBay selling and income so it is not that hidden away anymore and easily seacheable. The best thing to do is to be open and honest about the whole situation and explain how you were using the income generated and how that is declining.

Best of luck to you.

[needhelp9999]

thanks for your responses. My attorney said that because im selling my own stuff then it is not a business , i'm not "buying and selling" but i'm concerned anyways.
I barely see the attorney, each time i have to deal with a different paralegal and end up explaining everything all over again and i don't think any of them really understand !

[Poppie]

I'm not a BK expert, but I do have a little side business so maybe I can clarify that aspect of it.

When you filed your taxes this year, how did you classify this income? Did you fill out a Schedule C so that you could deduct your expenses and claim your business income and pay taxes on it? Since you are just selling your own stuff, even though it's a lot of stuff, you can make the argument that it's not a business. However, if you filed a Schedule C with your taxes and deducted expenses, then you have to call it a business.

[needhelp9999]

thanks for your response.

I sold my personal stuff at a loss, there was no schedule c filed.

[Poppie]

thanks for your response.

I sold my personal stuff at a loss, there was no schedule c filed.

Then I think your attorney is right. Selling off personal items is generally not considered a business unless you are making a profit. Now if you bought all of these items a month before you started listing them, then you might have a hard time proving that they were personal items and not business inventory. But I assume you weren't doing that. I assume these items have been added to your collection slowly over the years, right?

And even if the Trustee wants to say it's a business, all you'd have to do is prove that you didn't make any profit. On the Means Test there is a spot to deduct your business expenses from your business revenues. Business expenses would include the price you paid for your "inventory", your ebay fees, your paypal fees, shipping costs, etc. So if you sold items for less than you paid for them, you are in the negative and there will be no business income to report.

Again, I'm not a BK expert, but that's my $.02.