This is a great question about eBay I recently replied to:
I plan on selling a lot (i mean a lot) on ebay and I was curious to the amount of income or the amount of items i recieve/sell to be “bumped up” to a business or retail status. If someone could give me a dollar amount or number of items, i would be very pleased. I have looked over the ebay site and could not find a whole lot on this.
In general, I do not know of any dollar amount that requires you to be a business.
The only time eBay factors in your dollar amount is if they consider your powerseller status. You can be a powerseller whether or not you have a personal or business account, and eBay doesn’t usually differentiate between the two account at all to my knowledge. They never tell you suddenly you need to be a business.
In terms of tax purposes, the dollar amount only matters if you are making income. For example: You sell $10,000 a year of your own personal stuff, but it is all stuff you have already purchased for $11,000. In that case, you only got some of your money back on stuff you already owned and didn’t make income (a $1,000 loss).
However, if you buy stuff and resell (like buy something for $10 and sell for $30), then you have made $20 income or “capital gain”. IRS (and potentially local state business license rules) require you to disclose all of our income to them.
So if you made a $1 profit, technically you are supposed to report it to the IRS (although I suspect most wouldn’t report that amount).
In terms of a business license, check your local courhouse/municipality for income requirements. Most locations require you to have a business license and sales tax registration if you make more than $3,000 in income per year.