Go To Great Panes

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Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2012
(This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.)

I’ve seen lots of posts with confusion about the new 1099 Paypal is sending to some sellers. Here’s the scoop:

The 1099 Paypal is sending out is only fulfilling their obligation under a new law, it has nothing to do with whether or not you are required to file income taxes.
Paypal will only be sending it to people who bring in at least $20,000 AND have 200 or more transactions through PP.
Regardless as to whether or not Paypal (or other company) sends a seller this form, the seller must report income for their business if they meet the IRS’s requirements for filing a return.

Do you meet the requirements? Generally speaking, if you have to file income tax for any reason (day job, filing jointly w/ spouse, etc) you must report all your income on your taxes. If you have at lest $400 profit from your small business, you will most likely need to file. Your best bet is to get info about whether or not you need to file directly from the IRS–this post should help:

Do I Need to File a Tax Return?

And if you do need to file, this post will help with getting & adding up your income/expense info from Paypal:

Download Your Paypal History

This one will help when you are filling out the schedule C to report your small business income:

US Sellers: Help for Filing Income Taxes for Your Small Business

Turbo Tax: Many folks ask about whether or not they need to get the Home & Business version of TurboTax. I haven’t tried that version myself, but I do know that with Turbo Tax Deluxe, you can use the ‘add a form’ feature and add the schedule C to your taxes.

The interview process in the TurboTax Deluxe does cover the schedule C once you add it, but their website implies that the home & business version has more help for filling the schedule C out.

Income tax is totally separate from sales tax requirements for your business. See here for help with sales tax & business registration:

Sales Tax & Business Registration
(links to official state websites)

Add comment | February 3, 2012 - 8:20 pm

January 2012 USPS Rate Increases
at a Glance

Posted in Home,Shipping--Mailing

Visit our 2nd Etsy shop: GoToSupplies

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2012
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

USPS Shipping Discounts vs Retail rates
as of
January 2012

If you are printing your labels with postage through an online service or using the USPS Shipping Assistant with postage stamps to cover the cost (see here for help with labels: Shipping Basics), you get a discount.

Labels with postage through online services like Paypal get “Commercial Base Prices” for USPS shipments which are better than the retail chart rates you’ll see if you click this USPS Shipping Rate Charts link (the page the general public sees for rates on the website), and they get free Delivery Confirmation.

Labels printed using the downloadable USPS Shipping Assistant using stamps for postage get the regular retail rates for postage but you still get Delivery Confirmation free.

Quick Charts for First Class Package Service
(Updated for 01/12 rates)

~~~ Click images for a larger view–opens in a new tab or window ~~~

*DC = Delivery Confirmation, 85 cents when purchased at the retail level.

Please be sure to confirm all info you get online with official sources to be sure they are up-to-date & accurate. See here for First Class Retail Prices on the USPS website to easily compare them to the First Class Commercial Base Prices. See here for Priority Commercial Base Prices.

For International First Class, all 1 oz packages are the same rate and they’ve increased the rates quite a bit:

~~~ Click images for a larger view–opens in a new tab or window ~~~

You can also confirm those rates–as you should all info you get from unofficial sources–in this PDF download from USPS:
http://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/manuals/dmm300/Notice123.pdf

Need more help? Check out the Shipping Basics page, also linked to from the right sidebar of every page in gold letters.

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2012
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Add comment | January 29, 2012 - 6:35 pm

Not syndicated, but should be?

Posted in Etsy,Google Base/Checkout,Home

So you’ve read about Syndication on Etsy, and you see that you’ve met the requirements for getting syndicated by Etsy but you still don’t see “syndication” in the sidebar of your account under the promote section?

And you’ve had one more sale after you met the requirements?

Then you need to contact admin to have your shop syndicated. While this feature is supposed to automatically enroll each seller who meets the requirements one sale *after they meet the requirements*, it doesn’t seem to be happening for many.

There are several Etsy forum threads in the bugs section about syndication–both about the glitchiness of items being uploaded & about folks who are supposed to have syndication but don’t. Admin have been very attentive in those threads so posting there is sure to get you some help.

Already syndicated? Need help seeing if you are syndicated and/or seeing all your Etsy items are showing up? See this post:

Finding Your Etsy Items in Google Shopping

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo

Add comment | January 2, 2012 - 4:06 pm

Get Syndicated on Etsy: What it Takes

Posted in Home

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Syndication is how Etsy items get into Google’s special Shopping/Product Search.

All sellers will eventually be syndicated, but until recently the admin have been vague about the sales & positive customer experience they have said a shop needs before they will be syndicated. Sean recently posted giving us a little more info on the current (though perhaps not permanent) prerequisites for becoming syndicated on Etsy:

You must have:

5 sales
Good feedback (only counts feedback as a seller & we still don’t know how many is needed)
and an account in good standing (no open non-delivery cases, no overdue bill).

Once you have met the above you need to have another sale–that triggers the system to check your shop status and should automatically syndicate you if you meet the requirements.

See Sean’s post yourself right here: http://www.etsy.com/teams/7720/bugs/discuss/9347263 and his earlier post in the admin announcements section: http://www.etsy.com/teams/7716/announcements/discuss/8940359

Need help seeing if you are syndicated and/or seeing all your Etsy items are showing up? See this post:

Finding Your Etsy Items in Google Shopping

Visit our Etsy shop: GoTo

Add comment | December 6, 2011 - 8:00 am

Clearing up what Etsy’s Syndication Is For

Posted in Etsy,Google Base/Checkout,Home

Google Search: Google uses robots (spiders) to follow links from page to page (crawl the web) to index sites to use in regular search results:

http://www.google.com

Google crawls intermittently, there’s no changing when it will crawl and find your items for inclusion. The majority of shoppers using Google to search come to a site through Google’s regular search.

Google Shopping: There’s a second Google search you can use to find things to buy–it’s Google’s Shopping Search or Product Search:

http://www.google.com/products

Items are submitted to this search for inclusion through Google Merchant Center, it’s the only way to get in the Shopping Search. Only website owners can submit items to Google Merchant Center, so venues like Etsy must submit your items for you. This search is only for items that are in US Dollars* and have shipping to the USA.

Syndication is how Etsy uploads our items to Google Merchant Center to get into Google’s special shopping/product search. For some shops they see a big improvement in searches bringing traffic to their shops, others not so much.

Occasionally you’ll see three items pulled from Google Merchant Center submissions listed under “Shopping results for Your-Search-Terms” on page 1 of regular Google search results next to an image of one of the three items. “Shopping results for Your-Search-Terms” is a link that will take you to all Google Shopping results for the search terms or you can click one of the item names to go directly to that item.

There is also a link to the Shopping search in the header of the search results page or the left sidebar, depending on the view of the search results page you are seeing.

Need help seeing if you are syndicated and/or seeing all your Etsy items are showing up? See this post:

Finding Your Etsy Items in Google Shopping

*Even Etsy items that use international currencies are submitted.

Add comment | December 5, 2011 - 8:36 am

USPS 2011 Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Posted in Home,Shipping--Mailing

Looking for the USPS recommended cut off dates for shipping for the 2011 Holidays? Here you go:

USPS Announces 2011 Holiday Mail-by Dates
http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2011/pr11_121.htm

May you have many sales & early shoppers!

Add comment | November 15, 2011 - 8:22 am

Ft Tryon Medieval Festival this Sunday!

Posted in Home

We’ve been super busy preparing for the Fort Tryon Medieval Festival in NYC this Sunday, October 2nd. If you’re in the area we’d love you to stop by our booth and say hi!

We’re in the fair’s “Riverside Market” overlooking the Hudson River. Read more about the fair here:

http://www.whidc.org/home.html

A few of the stained glass items we’ll be selling can be seen here:

http://gotogreatpanes.com/renaissance.html

Fare-thee-well!

Add comment | September 30, 2011 - 3:52 pm

Etsy updated their Tagging Rules

Posted in Etsy,Home

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

If you hadn’t heard about the default search on Etsy changing from most recently listed (recency) to most relevant (relevancy)–which also includes recency as a factor–then you might not have known that the tagging rules were getting an overhaul.

Admin made short work of giving us some new tagging rules which you can see in this section of The DOs and DON’Ts of Etsy:

Labeling supply items

Discuss it here in the forums:

Policy Update: Labeling Items

Changing your tags quicker:

You can type tags all in the tag box at once separating each with a comma and each tag will get their own tag box.

So typing in: blue, red, hand knit hat, wool hat

Will show up as 4 tags: blue
red
hand knit hat
wool hat

You can even copy and paste the list of tags from your current listing into a text document, re-work them then paste them back in the tag box on Etsy which is great if you want to re-order them while you are at it.

(While Etsy Admin have said that tag order doesn’t currently matter, they don’t say that it never will, so might as well have a good order now and not have to re-do them again if that change comes along. )

Thanks to PhenomeGNOME for the reminder about how to do it quickly!

If you plan on changing titles & descriptions and you use third-party apps, you can use Craftopolis’ Edit Express to edit the titles & descriptions of multiple listings at once: Craftopolis’ Edit Express

This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.
Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011

Add comment | August 11, 2011 - 6:09 pm

New Sales Tax Laws
(Amazon Sales Tax Law)

Posted in General Small Business Info,Home,Sales Tax

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

I’ve seen lots of folks posting about the new California sales tax law and the same type of law in a few other states (like IL, AR CT, NC…), and there seems to be a lot of confusion–not unlike the confusion back in 2008 when NY instituted a similar law (read more about that here).

Hopefully this post will help keep you from getting caught up in the hype & put you at ease a bit.

In short:

Now that so much of our commerce is internet-based and many businesses have representatives in other states that work for them online, the states are reworking the laws so the burden of collecting & remitting sales tax on taxable transactions isn’t on the buyer, but is on the seller.

Most of these laws have both a transaction-allowance that excludes most small businesses from this responsibility and a requirement of a new type of physical presence in a state.

(For example, you’d need to both ship $10,000 in goods to NY addresses in a year and you’d need to be affiliated with a NY-presence that you pay commissions or fees to, like Etsy, before you’d need to worry about this.)

Here’s the main points folks seem to be unclear on:

This isn’t about a new tax. It’s tax that is already owed to the state on taxable purchases.

This is only about regulating who is responsible for collecting/remitting the existing taxes due to the state on “remote sales” (mail order sales, internet sales, phone sales).

This doesn’t mean you need to collect your state’s sales tax from buyers who are having items shipped to an out of state address.

This doesn’t mean you need to collect a different state’s sales tax from buyers who are having items shipped to an out of state address unless you ship a whole lot there and you pay commissions/fees to someone/a business in that state.

These new Amazon*sales tax laws are about re-defining/clarifying what a “business nexus” in a state is, because the current definition leaves a loophole that allows big businesses like Amazon to avoid collecting sales tax on taxable transactions even though they have representatives within that state who are referring folks to their website and receiving a commission for doing so.

When the seller doesn’t collect sales tax on taxable transactions & the buyer does not remit use tax on those purchases, then the states aren’t getting the money they are due & money they need to properly function. This has left many states in a lurch for funding.

A business nexus is most often defined as having a place of business in a state or having a representative (person) in a state that solicits for your business, but with the advent of the internet and online affiliations & sales, the rules of the game are changing.

If you have business nexus in a state, generally you are required to register in that state for sales tax purposes, and you also need to remit sales tax to the state (or collect & remit, depending on the state’s laws). Now big businesses won’t be able to skate around that law by claiming no physical presence when they do indeed have people or a business in a state who represents them even if just online or through an affiliated business.

If you are just realizing you should be collecting sales tax for your state, this post will help you find the info you need on your state’s website:

US: Sales Tax & Business Registration
Links to Official Government Websites

*Amazon is suing NY over their new 2008 sales tax law to try and keep from being required to collect NY sales tax and that’s where the reference to Amazon tax laws comes in. Amazon has affiliates in New York and NY has re-defined nexus to include affiliates located in NY, which means under the new law Amazon must collect & remit NY sales tax on NY-shipped orders because they also ship more than $10,000 a year to NY addresses.

Other states that have added similar laws have had their affiliates removed by Amazon so that Amazon doesn’t have to collect sales tax for those states until the NY lawsuit is settled (rather than Amazon suing every state who has created a similar new legal definition for a business nexus).

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Add comment | July 17, 2011 - 10:43 am

Getting a Business Phone

Posted in General Small Business Info,Home

Go To Great Panes, Kathryn Maloney ©2011
This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

It can come in handy to have a phone number for your small business, but it can be expensive to have a separate land line or cell phone when you are just starting up.

I’m a big fan of personal privacy so I definitely was not interested in giving out our home number (especially knowing this about tax registration).

Looking to keep expenses at a minimum we looked to online services and decided to try Magic Jack which has worked well for us:

http://www.magicjack.com

It’s a bit cumbersome as a program starting it up (and plugging a phone into the computer) but for less than $75 we got a phone number that’d be just for the business for at least 5 years including a voicemail account and free domestic calls (and free directory assistance, call waiting, three-way calling and call forwarding).

If we don’t have the Magic Jack phone hooked up or the computer is offline, callers can leave us a voicemail. When that happens we get an email with the voicemail attached that I can listen to right from my email inbox. If I don’t have internet access I can call and get my voicemail using any phone.

If I need to call a customer, I just plug the MagicJack & phone into the front USB port on my computer and it works like any other phone.

A free option would Google Voice which wasn’t around yet when we got our phone number through Magic Jack:

https://www.google.com/voice

We’ve since gotten a Google Voice account and I’ve used it a few places though I am hesitant to make the number our primary number for business since I don’t know if Google will continue the service or keep it free (and we just don’t need to pay for second phone number for the business).

It gives you a phone number and free calls within the US & Canada but I’ve never tried to use it to make an outgoing call with it myself.

One cool thing about Google Voice is that when I get an email about a voicemail it includes a text transcript of the message. It’s sometimes a little off, but it does give me the general gist without having to turn on the speakers for the computer (we like our computer to be quiet–scares the daylights out of me when I use someone else’s computer and it makes noise, LOL).

Another affordable option through the computer is Skype:

http://www.skype.com

There’s a reasonable fee with different features depending on which service you choose. I’ve found their tech support to be difficult (really, no phone support line??), but if the phone line & billing are working well it’s a good tool.

This post is copyrighted–you do not have permission to repost this content elsewhere but you are welcome to link to it if you’d like to share the information.

Add comment | July 10, 2011 - 9:31 pm

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Go To Great Panes

Author Archives: GoTo

Confused about Income Taxes & Paypal’s 1099 ?

January 2012 USPS Rate Increases
at a Glance

Not syndicated, but should be?

Get Syndicated on Etsy: What it Takes

Clearing up what Etsy’s Syndication Is For

USPS 2011 Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Ft Tryon Medieval Festival this Sunday!

Etsy updated their Tagging Rules

New Sales Tax Laws
(Amazon Sales Tax Law)

Getting a Business Phone

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You can type tags all in the tag box at once separating each with a comma and each tag will get their own tag box.
So typing in:	blue, red, hand knit hat, wool hat
Will show up as 4 tags:	blue red hand knit hat wool hat
You can even copy and paste the list of tags from your current listing into a text document, re-work them then paste them back in the tag box on Etsy which is great if you want to re-order them while you are at it. (While Etsy Admin have said that tag order doesn’t currently matter, they don’t say that it never will, so might as well have a good order now and not have to re-do them again if that change comes along. )