Canadian EBAY - reporting your income to the government?

[Modee]

Ottawa widens tax probe of eBay 'PowerSellers'

PAUL WALDIE
Federal tax officials are expanding a sweeping investigation into users of eBay Canada to determine whether more than 10,000 sellers have reported all the revenue they earned. The Canada Revenue Agency launched the probe about two years ago and initially focused on all eBay Canada "PowerSellers" in 2004 and 2005, which totalled about 10,000 people. The agency recently told eBay Canada it plans to expand the investigation to include all PowerSellers in 2006 and 2007 as well, putting several thousand more people under review.

[Modee]

This topic has been discussed a great deal on this forum, but yes - I am surprised that the US and Canadian governments are going to get this "gross receipts" information.

For example at U.S. casinos any slot machine win over $1200. is reported, but one can take in millions at any blackjack or baccarat or other table game and not a penny is reported to the government. Why? Because the casino cannot attest to the exact amount the customer won at table games.

What these reports of gross receipts from credit card processors will do, however, is alert the government to the fact that sales of something are going on. If the recipient is reporting no income from those sales, he had better later be able to justify that he was losing money and did not need to file.