Trash Into Treasure

When I get bored with the shiny things I buy, I like to sell them on eBay. I heard recently that there's going to be a new policy in effect come 2011 that sales totalling over $20,000 with over 200 transactions will be reported to the IRS. I really don't understand that since all the shit I have sitting around that I bought for fun is probably worth twice that if I sold all of it. And the crappy part is it cost me more than that to get it over quite a long period of time.

I guess what it means is I need to clear it all out before 2011 because I don't need the IRS taxing me again for stuff I already own, or at least trying to, anyway. Were I making a profit, I could understand it, but selling my garbage is merely damage control and loss mitigation on my part. Fortunately, I'm able to keep my losses rather minimal. All my gains are of the intellectual variety. If those are ever able to be taxed, I'll be screwed but Bubba Funderburk and his sistercousinwife, Tanqueray, will hoot and holler in triumph.

Maybe one day I'll have my own business going, but I would need like ten times the volume and a little thing called profit for that to happen. It irritates me to see people on those infomercials talking about how they "did $500,000 in sales last year" without going into detail about profit.

I'm sick of posers mentioning gross sales as their profit. When you see some unshaven fuck in dirty old clothes claiming to have made $200,000 in the past year he needs a crowbar to the grille.