
Google Checkout Tries To Ring Up Market-Share Gains With Free Transactions - nickb
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/12/google-checkout-tries-to-ring-up-market-share-gains-with-free-transactions/
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jsackmann
It just occurred to me the other day why many sellers (especially eBayers who
buy and sell in large volume) will stick with Paypal and not consider
GCheckout before some major changes happen.

Until 2/1/08, Checkout is free, and Paypal is ~3%. Clear win for Checkout,
except...

You can buy lots and lots of stuff with a paypal account. Not only that, but
the money you get via paypal never leaves your paypal account. With Checkout,
Google automatically sends the money you receive to your checking account (in
my case, anyway), which means that if you receive $1,000 and spend $1,000, all
of that is going through an offline account.

In other words, if you're willing take a slight risk of a very invasive audit
(i.e., one that looks at your paypal history), receiving $1,000 thru paypal
and spending $1,000 through paypal is all tax-free. Doing the same through
google means you take the tax hit on the income.

If I didn't hate paypal so much and like checkout so much, it'd be enough to
get me to switch over right away.

~~~
run4yourlives
>receiving $1,000 through paypal and spending $1,000 through paypal is all
tax-free.

Well, not really. $1000 may not seem like much, but multiply that upt to
$100000 and make it your sole source of income and you can bet the IRS will be
all over you. And it isn't you they'll be auditing, but Paypal itself:

[http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:oX20J-QVyBkJ:www.usatoda...](http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:oX20J-QVyBkJ:www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2006-04-11-taxes-
paypal_x.htm+paypal+and+taxes&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=ca&client=firefox-a)
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125368-page,1/article.html>

