Posts tagged news

Legendary brand Kona got snapped up by private equity in 2022, and now after a great deal of mismanagement (who could have predicted this?), their future is in doubt. Owner Kent Outdoors is apparently now offering Kona for sale.

There has been an outpouring of love for Kona over the last few days–from BikePacking to Stevel Knievel to BikeMag.

Will someone come to Kona’s rescue? We hope so!

After record low inventory levels during the pandemic, bike shops now have record high levels of inventory! Just take a look at the graph in Rick Vosper's recent article in Bicycle Retailer. What does that mean for used bike sales? It means if you are selling, your bike will probably take longer to sell, and for less. If you are buying, there are gonna be some great deals on new or used! Of course this won't necessarily apply to rare or hard to find models, or vintage stuff. But it's gonna be a wild year for sure!

Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Earlier today the IRS announced it would delay a rule change that would have impacted anyone selling over $600 on marketplaces like BikeList. You can read more about it here. This proposed rule change was incredibly annoying and confusing for sellers on marketplace platforms like ours, and drove many BikeList sellers to write in to complain to Rob and myself.

It used to be that if a person sold more than $20,000 AND 200 or more transactions on a platform like eBay or BikeList, the company would be required to collect personal information like Social Security Number, Address, etc., and then report those transactions to the IRS.

However, in 2021 Congress lowered that threshold to $600 and ONE transaction. Why $600? Best guess is that is the same magical threshold for reporting independent contractors. Which was set back in 1954 by the way. Gas was 21 cents a gallon back then.

When we were building BikeList earlier this year we we confronted with two VERY BAD options. Either we collect that personal information BEFORE a seller is allowed to list items on our site, or we collect the information before releasing funds to the seller when they cross $600.

We knew we would lose some folks with this, but chose to collect the info up front so nobody would think that we were pulling a gotcha on them after they sold their item. A quick look at our marketplace shows that about 80% of the bikes for sale for $600 or above. For most of our sellers, a single bike sale would trigger the information collection, reporting transactions to the IRS, and a 1099k in the mail in January.

So, where do we go from here? Now that the limit remains at $20,000 and 200 transactions for at least a year AND there is bi-partisan support for changing the law we have some room to redesign our seller onboarding experience to ask for information only if a seller is approaching the higher limit.

Even if Congress updates the rule to be $5k or $10k, it will be more manageable than $600. This is likely a larger development effort, so we can't quite say when the site will be updated..sometime next year.

Finally, we had a good time helping drive awareness in DC as part of the dream team. We met with some very nice Congressional advisors, staffers, and even one of our state's Senators. We tried our best to relay our seller's complaints - even the harsh expletive-laden ones - and be part of the solution.

For the past few weeks we've been speaking with lawmakers in DC about changing a not-so-good tax policy that's going to affect online seller's lives next year. Many of BikeList's members who used to be considered casual sellers may now need to report marketplace income to the IRS. In many cases this does not mean there are additional taxes owed (disclaimer: please consult a tax professional!) but it generates quite a bit of confusion for the infrequent seller and extra paperwork for marketplaces like us!

BikeList in the news again

We were featured in a recent News Story in GeekWire that nicely summarizes the issue.

Recently, BikeList creators Rob and Dan sat down with Seattle tech blog Geekwire to talk about why we started BikeList and what we're working on. You can read more over at Geekwire.