Have Tax Information questions? Post here!

[PayPal_Adrian]

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[4Crawler]

Welcome to the club!

I get the same thing.  I downloaded my account history 1/1/11 - 12/31/11 and added up all the gross payments received upon which I was assessed a fee (this is the "recipe" I was told by may Paypal merchant support person) and I get within about 1% of the reported total.  The 1099-k file and the posted 1099-k reconciliation file and the 2011 financial summary all agree with each other as far as the total, but those three documents all were generated by Paypal.  With my history file and Paypal's reconciliation file, I even get a different number of transactions, again within about 1% of each other, but not exact. 

Going to be interesting when it comes to signing that 1040 form on April 15th.  You know where you swear that all the number on the form are correct?  Do I sign even through I can't verify the Paypal number or what?

And I still have the main issue of needing the information I finally received from Paypal on 2/9/12 before 1/31/12 since that is when I need to file my state sales taxes and on that form I need to put down a "gross sales" number and I have found the best case is to make sure that the federal income tax gross sales number = the state income tax gross sales number = the state sales tax gross sales number.  If they are not equal, those three entities start talking to each other and I get stuck paying interest and penalties.  And that is all because Paypal can't get is the information some of us need in a timely manner.  Yes, I know IRS only requires Paypal to post mark the forms by 1/31, but Paypal needs to realize that the folks they are sending these forms to are by definition merchants.  As such, some of them are obligated to pay other taxes based upon the reported gross sales number.  And if I do not pay my sales taxes by 1/31, I face a penalty and if I pay the wrong amount becasue I don't know what Paypal is going to report, I pay a penalty.  Why is it that Amazon.com sent 1099-k forms to their merchants on about 1/26?  I guess it is because Amazon realizes that their merchants are merchants and need the information as soon as possible.  Payal seems to be saying all they care about is not getting fined byt he IRS and do just the bare minimum that is required.

[brewhardware]

For everyone finding a discrepency between the 1099 box one and your financial report (or calculated from your downloaded history spreadsheet), I think I have the answer.

The type of payment that is not included in the 1099 is personal payments. The challenge is that personal payments are not marked separately in the spreadsheet downloads. What you have to do is filter to all transaction types that are payments and also filter those down to records that have "fee" set to "0".  Once I disregarded those, the gross amounts matched down to the penny.

[4Crawler]

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@brewhardware wrote:

For everyone finding a discrepency between the 1099 box one and your financial report (or calculated from your downloaded history spreadsheet), I think I have the answer.

The type of payment that is not included in the 1099 is personal payments. The challenge is that personal payments are not marked separately in the spreadsheet downloads. What you have to do is filter to all transaction types that are payments and also filter those down to records that have "fee" set to "0".  Once I disregarded those, the gross amounts matched down to the penny.

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I did that with my downloaded history, I sorted by fee and only totalled those payments received that had a negative fee (fee paid) and that comes within about 1% of my 1099-k number both in total and in number of transactions.  I don't really feel like digging through close to 1800 transactions to find out which match and which do not.

And I do not have any personal payments as all the transactions were due to the business.

[brewhardware]

All mine are business related as well but you'll still have people sending you personal payments, potentially. I had $270 of them for some reason or another.

It's worth checking if you have any paypal fee = zero that are payments.

[4Crawler]

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@brewhardware wrote:

All mine are business related as well but you'll still have people sending you personal payments, potentially. I had $270 of them for some reason or another.

It's worth checking if you have any paypal fee = zero that are payments.

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Did that, I downloaded my history, then sorted on the Fee column and split the file where the fee went from being charged (negative values) from not being charged (0 values) and totalled only the transactions in which I was assessed a fee.  I get within about 1% of the total number of transactions and 1% of the reported 1099-k number, but not exactly equal.

[Smokymist]

Paypal is reporting that I made $7,000 more than I actually did in 2011. Where are they coming up with that number ? I do NOT want to pay taxes on money I didn't even make !!!

[brewhardware]

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@Smokymist wrote:

Paypal is reporting that I made $7,000 more than I actually did in 2011. Where are they coming up with that number ? I do NOT want to pay taxes on money I didn't even make !!!

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I don't think it's possible for us (your peers) to help out without more information. This is a question for paypal's support staff.

Where are you coming up with the number for the amount of payments you think you received?

[Smokymist]

First and formost, I file quarterly taxes in which I keep all of my paperwork, so I know how much I have made. Secondly I went back and printed off my sales , monthly from paypal. I added up everything, gross, plus gifts ( which were less than $100). The 1099 form paypal sent me is $7,000 more than what their own records show. I'm not the only one that this is happening to either. And get help from Paypal? really ? they have yet to return the email I sent them over a week ago.

[grahambr]

Anyone know how to request a report from Paypal that lists the transactions that Paypal uses for the 1099?  It cant be that hard to write...they are already getting the data... 

It would be SO helpful...

[4Crawler]

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@grahambr wrote:

Anyone know how to request a report from Paypal that lists the transactions that Paypal uses for the 1099?  It cant be that hard to write...they are already getting the data... 

It would be SO helpful...

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It should be in the 1099-k form link.  On mine, at least, there is the 1099-k form and a 1099-k reconciliation CSV file that lists transaction IDs and totals.  I can sum the totals up and get the 1099-k number.

The problem I have is that I can't duplicate that total when I download my own account history and then total all the transactions to which a Paypal fee was assessed.  I can get within about 1% of the 1099-k number for the total and of the number of transactions listed in the reconciliation file.  So I would like to see a simple set of steps that I (or anyone else) could follow to duplicate those reported numbers. I don't have the time to spend going through 1800+ transactions in their list against my history list to see what is in and what is not.  My history file has over 5700 entries as I recall, I sorted that file on the "Fee" column and broke it where it changed from fee paid (negative numbers) to no fee paid (fee = 0.00).  I totaled the gross payments and can't duplicate the reported total on my 1099-k form.  If I am doing something wrong, please let me know.  This is how I was told to get the number from my Paypal merchant support folks.  They said "simply add up all payments for which you were charged a transaction fee".  I think I did that and I do not get the reported number????