Currently, I am receiving disability payments, am a father of 3 and wife works to cover insurance. We were homeless for a few years while this all went through and finally was approved last year. Got a house which is smaller then what we had before all of this. We decided to start to sell off majority of belongings we no longer needed or want and made a bit of money on ebay doing so. Keep in mind, money had been paid for the items we sold a while ago or even recently so the total amount made is not all a profit. How is this going to affect my disability benefits? Please if someone can help, I would greatly appreciate it. Not sure what to do now and dont want to end up owing the government money we do not have. Thanks greatly for any response
Social Security Disability and eBay selling
We are not experts in this area, but here are a couple comments which may be helpful.
First, PayPal has started to send 1099-K statements to those folks who have more than $20,000 in gross receipts and who have more than 200 transactions in a year. So if you receive a 1099-K or any other similar 1099 from eBay or other source, this is also reported to the government and you may have some explaining to do if you're on disability.
Second, Social Security has a notion of "Substantial Gainful Activity" which may come into play in the case of eBay selling. In such case, the eBay sales may be construed as self-employment income. If you had average monthly earnings over the SGA level ($1,010 in 2012) this may impact your disability payments.
http://www.ssa.gov/redbook/eng/definedisability.htm
Thank you for the reply
I had asked a worker that the social security office about this a few years ago when I was going through filing process, he said it would be fine but as I understand, the laws recently changed. I will have to call and ask someone at my local office as what to do from here on out