The Blubber

Ticket resellers who passed $600 in ticket sales on marketplaces such as StubHub and Ticketmaster now need to report their activity to the IRS.

Ticket platforms will now have the responsibility of reporting sellers' earnings to the IRS if their ticket sales in 2023 exceed $600. This marks a significant change from the previous IRS threshold, which applied to ticket resellers who reached $20,000 in revenue and conducted over 200 transactions. Under the new law, even a single transaction exceeding $600 can trigger the reporting requirement, as reported by Fox Business.

Irrespective of whether resellers made a profit or not, ticket platforms are mandated to send a 1099-K form to users who have sold more than $600 worth of tickets, which they must complete for the IRS. However, sellers will only incur additional taxes if they generated a profit from their ticket sales, meaning they sold tickets for more than their purchase price.

This lowered threshold was introduced by the Biden Administration at a time when Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, which commenced in March and is scheduled to run until November 2024, is achieving record-breaking ticket sales. According to CNN, Swift's tour is anticipated to gross $2.2 billion from North American ticket sales alone, establishing it as the highest-grossing tour in history. SeatGeek reported that the average resale price of an "Eras" ticket stood at $1,607.