Yes it does have to have one or the other. And i just spoke to someone who is a tax person and was told yes that you are supposed to file taxes on it. Because it is income.
Also, do I have to fax the merchant account # to Ebay before listing my items? Is that true that I don't need to list paypal address if I have the merchant account?
You can list with a Paypal address and send invoices from your merchant account w/o faxing anything..if you want to integrate the merch acct and not accept PP you will have to fax them the info..
My tax guy told I didn't have to claim ebay unless I was "grossing 10,000+ per year" then you can write off your rent, computer, shipping costs, gas it takes to goto the post office, supplies, inventory, ect..
lizardking, according to the IRS tax books, you can only write off things like rent based on the percentage of your home you use solely for business. So if you store a bunch of inventory, it pays off.
Yeah something like that..there were some specifics..but I didn't come close especially last year as I had given up for the better part of the year..so we really didn't talk that much about it..but independent business owners can usually write off alot of stuff you wouldn't even think of..or atleast stuff I didn't think of..my mom works for herself and got a new car just to write it off last year..
i use turbo tax software. very easy to use, and it has all of the correct and incorrect write-offs you can use. you have to get the home and business version though. i've been using it for about 7 years now.
merchant account on ebay 
