New Tax Threat To Stamp Collecting

The tax man is not liked in any country especially when they smash the working class.
Old Aussie saying!
May the tax man's "chickens turn into emus and peck his dunny down".

This is just another way to make up for governmental irresponsibliity. I doubt my collection is worth that much money. However, since my wife is Turkish
I've told her that in the event of my untimely demise to auction off some of the higher quality things I have at a philatelic auction in Istanbul. Although I would like to think that my daughters or their kids would be into collecting, I'm rather pessimistic about it. It makes more sense to sell the stamps in their country of origin. I think they'd get a better price there and probably be under the radar of the feds anyhow.

Congress is causing BIGGER problems than that now...they are fortunate its not up to me...i would have the whole bunch disemboweled and hung !!

The 1099 reporting requirement that sparked this thread was repealed in April, BTW.

Is this a "live in the US" thing? I've no idea how it works up here in the soon to be frozen north!

Funny, my wife asked me just last night what to do with my stamps should, heaven forbid, something happen to me. Hmmm. I think I need to reassure her that they really aren't worth a lot. For my own safety.

The Case of the Missing Stamp Collector!

The game is afoot!

She might stick a bunch of your stamps on you and post you to Timbuktu or somewhere like that!

Ironically, "philately" literally means "love of taxes". Originally, the receiver of mail was the one who paid for the delivery. With stamps, the sender paid the government ahead of time -- hence, the term philately, which really has nothing to do with stamp "collecting".

So based on this thread, I guess we are philatelists, but not in the literal sense!

k

According to Wiki, the translation of the word "philately" is:




Not sure where the phrase "love of taxes" fits in?

You are right, my bad memory. "love of not paying taxes"

I guess we are literally philatelists after all!

k

Might be a little bit off topic,,, if you purchase a stamp say at 10% catalogue value then donate it to a charity can you put down the catalogue value as a donation, Just thinking just about every stamp has a catalogue value of 20 cents. So if the tax man comes after you for your stamp collection wouldn't it make sense to donate a big old bag of stamps to the Goodwill store say 10,000 stamps that equals a Catalogue value of $2000 which = a tax break of $2000. And for any mint stamps in your country you bought them for postage so they are only worth face value

The IRS requires you to assign a fair market value (FMV) to your donation. That is the amount you may reasonably expect to get if you had sold the bag of stamps and donated the proceeds. That is not always the same as the total catalog value. Sometimes more, but usually much less.

The Scott catalog specifically notes that the minimum catalog value (currently 20c) includes the overhead/labor costs of the dealer to sell that SINGLE stamp. The market value of bulk minimum value stamps will be significantly less. For instance, while a dealer might sell one US 1c Kestrel stamp for 20c, the dealer would have a hard time selling 10,000 1c Kestrel stamps at once for $2000. In fact, the dealer would be fortunate to get anything close to face value. In this case, FMV of face value ($100) would be reasonable since the total face value is relatively small (even though most dealers would not get that much for it), but a claim of FMV of $2000 would not be valid.

In the past decade, the IRS has started cracking down heavily on inflated/inaccurate FMV and also narrowing the scope of what is allowed. For example, in the past you could deduct the blue book value of a used car donation. Now, you are only allowed to deduct the actual selling value of the car when the tax-exempt organization sells the car. The reason for this is because many organizations were bulk-selling their cars at auction, getting a few hundred dollars per car, rather than anything close to the blue-book value of the car. Some people were donating problem cars and then deducting the full blue book value of the car. That is no longer permitted, and the IRS will only accept an accurate FMV or actual sales price of the item.

Of course, I have no idea how it's done in Canada or other countries...

Hey KHJ if I buy a stamp for 10% of CV and down the road my wife desides to hang on to it after my passing. I bet the taxman will put the CV value onto my estate.
Or if I will it to a friend they probally do the same way.The tax man will use the scott catalouge value to there full advantage

One of the best things King George V did for stamping in Australia was to influence the law that a persons stamp collection is not a taxable personal asset.
Very recently the pension part of our government that love to catch people out with hidden assets had no trouble saying that a 5 figure stamp collection is not an asset.