No time is better than late summer to be optimistic about our sports teams, and season ticket holders who are eager to defray high costs could start thinking about selling some tickets at a profit to recoup expenses.
But seller beware: You’ll want to take a timeout to review the tax rules.
We’re talking about one of the more confusing shifts in tax rules relating to paperwork in recent years. And if you blinked in 2025, well, the tax rules involving when you’ll be issued a 1099-K this year for online ticket sales and other transactions changed yet again, thanks to a provision in the tax-and-spending package signed into law this summer by President Donald Trump.
One minute in early 2025, fans were warned that they could be issued a trackable tax form if they made off with a football field of cash by reselling NFL game tickets at outlandish prices, far above the original value. Now, forget about it. Sure, it does make your head spin.
Make no mistake, you still could owe taxes on those ticket sales even if you do not receive a 1099-K.
Taxpayers are legally required to report profits from ticket sales regardless of whether they receive a 1099-K, said Scott Klein, senior manager for tax policy and advocacy with the American Institute of CPAs.
“If you sell a ticket at a profit, the gain – sale price minus original cost, including fees – is taxable,” he said.
Klein noted that failing to report income can trigger an IRS audit and may result in taxes owed, penalties and interest.
His suggestion: Take the time to maintain detailed records of your ticket purchases and sales. Sellers should retain receipts, confirmations, or screenshots for all transactions in case the IRS requests proof. You’d pay taxes on any profits that exceed your costs.
Fans scan their mobile tickets to enter the stadium before the 2024 NFC divisional round game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium on Jan. 20, 2024.
Occasional ticket sales are generally treated as sales of personal items, Klein told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.
“Losses from the resale of tickets purchased for personal use are typically not deductible and cannot be used to offset gains from the sale of other tickets.”
If you buy tickets with the intent to resell them regularly, Klein said, the IRS may classify this as a business activity. In such cases, you may be eligible to deduct related expenses on Schedule C. The IRS considers factors like frequency of sales, intent to make a profit and regularity of the activity to determine whether it is a business.
First, some history: Just a few years ago, an exceptionally high threshold existed for issuing a tax form called a 1099-K. The tax form was sent only to those who had received more than $20,000 from sales and had more than 200 transactions on third-party payment processing platforms in 2023 and earlier years.
Those platforms sent copies of the 1099-K to both the IRS and the taxpayer.
Then, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 revamped reporting requirements for third-party networks and required triggering a 1099-K if you had more than $600 in transactions.
A low threshold meant a bigger paper trail for the Internal Revenue Service to track taxable transactions.
But we never saw a flood of 1099-Ks once that $600 threshold was hit. The IRS kept delaying the implementation of the $600 threshold, and, instead, phased in different thresholds to better manage the administrative challenges of issuing millions of tax forms to people who never received them.
Earlier this year, for example, ticket sellers were warned that they’d receive a 1099-K from credit card companies, payment apps and online marketplaces during next year’s tax season if they sold tickets, other goods or services online for more than $2,500 in 2025. That was half of the threshold for sales in 2024.
The threshold was set to plunge to more than $600 in sales in 2026.
But wait, as I said, the rules are changing yet again.
The tax and spending package signed into law this summer changed the reporting requirements for Form 1099-K ‒ and far fewer people should be dealing with this paperwork next tax season.
“The reporting requirements have been retroactively restored to $20,000 in payments and over 200 transactions,” said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting in Riverwoods, Illinois.
Those thresholds are key.
For example, the changes in the rules mean that if a seller falls short on either component ‒ for instance, making $15,000 through 50 sales in a year ‒ the aggregate sales would not generate a 1099‑K, said Tom O’Saben, enrolled agent and director of tax content and government relations for the National Association of Tax Professionals.
“Casual ticket resellers, such as Lions season ticket holders, likely won’t receive a 1099-K unless they exceed both that high-dollar and high-transaction threshold in a year,” O’Saben said.
Yet, O’Saben warns that there might be some glitches. Some payment processors, he said, could choose to issue 1099-Ks even below the legal threshold as a conservative measure, to simplify compliance or maintain uniform reporting.
And he warned that mistakes also happen with mismatched records, duplicate accounts, or misclassification that can generate forms for amounts under the threshold.
In addition, O’Saben said a handful of states have their own lower 1099-K thresholds, including Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia. In those states, for example, sellers could still see a 1099-K at $600 or less, regardless of federal law.
While each platform reports separately, O’Saben said, if a seller is close to the threshold across different platforms, sometimes a platform might issue a form even if each platform is under the $20,000 and 200 transactions mark.
Sellers flagged as “business” or “professional” sellers on platforms may get 1099-K forms at lower internal thresholds, even without hitting the federal limits.
O’Saben said it’s best not to ignore a 1099-K if you get one, as the IRS has received that paperwork too, even if you received the 1099-K in error.
The 1099-K only shows your gross receipts, not your profit. So, the number you see on any 1099-K might not be fully taxable and that’s why you must have good records.
Tax benefits: ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ offers Americans lots of tax benefits. Here are a few to plan for
No doubt, taxpayers could be more befuddled than ever, especially if they paid attention to earlier announced changes in the 1099-K rules that now will no longer take place.
Luscombe noted that the IRS has announced that it will not adjust 1099 forms for changes in the mega tax bill until 2026.
“If the IRS does not update the 1099-K instructions for 2025, taxpayers may have some confusion as the 1099-K instructions may still refer to a $2,500 filing threshold for 2025 when the threshold is in fact much higher,” Luscombe said.
The same $20,000 and 200 transactions threshold will apply for 2026. Things would be less confusing when people file 2026 tax returns in 2027, Luscombe said, because the IRS promises to update the 1099-K form by then.
The IRS had yet to update some of its 1099-K tips as of late August, several weeks after Trump signed the tax and spending package into law.
Again, the new rules do not change what counts as income or how tax is calculated.
Technically, a profit is taxable whether you receive a 1099-K or not. You’d owe taxes on the income you generate that exceeds the cost of what you sold, whether we’re talking about selling college football tickets or culling your closet.
“Whether or not you receive a Form 1099-K,” the IRS states online, “you must still report any income on your tax return. This includes payments for any goods you sell (including personal items such as clothing or furniture sold at a gain) or services you provide.”
If you sell an old leather blazer for $150 and you originally paid $600 for it, for example, you’re not going to face a tax bill. You lost $450 on that deal and casual sellers cannot claim the loss to reduce their tax bill.
Resale platforms such as StubHub, Ticketmaster, Etsy, eBay and others all list information online about when they’re sending out a 1099-K. But you will have to look at your own numbers to know more about when you’re going to owe taxes and when you’re not.
Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: [email protected]. Follow her on X @tompor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tax rules change again when it comes to 1099-Ks for ticket resales
