When I was younger I used to barter quite a bit. More out of necessity. Now I have more cash so dont barter very much but generally speaking it seems that people just arent open to it.


Embarrassingly I had to get towed last week. On the way home I'm chatting with the driver and I mention I could trade him some tanned coin pelts. He thought about it for a sec but declined. I think if I pushed it he wouldve made the trade.

I have an accountant friend that barters his services during tax season and does pretty good for himself. He calculates his time and gives the barter that for fair market value for tax reporting.



How abouy you guys. You still barter? Remember what it was like in the not to distant past? Any old timers got some good ones?

just with the wife.

When I was unemployed years ago, I did nuisance skunk work for a dentist. He paid me very well for the skunks. He was very interested in how I trapped them and often talked for an hour or so. During one of our conversations, he asked what I did for a living, knowing I had a Master's Degree from a previous conversation. He was shocked when I told him I was unemployed and have no insurance. He continued to pay for the skunks, and had an appointment for my teeth to be cleaned.

Gubment hates us bartering.They cant tax it !!

I don’t I have always gotten the short end of the stick myself

I think thats what most people are scared of and thats really unfortunate. People always trying to get over on another.

A good trade both people leave with somethimg different but of similar value and both are satisfied and with clean consciences.

Bartering for me Started when I was a kid ...I suppose Tree house nails for getting rid of a Big wasp nest 45 years ago would be the first I can remember. So I'd be safe to say Bartering has been a big part of my make up all my life.
Several of my outbuildings would never have been built without Trading ADC trapping for their materials.

I do when I can. My neighbor owns a carpet cleaning company I have bartered some services from him and he barters his services often.
I got really good at bartering when I lived in Jerusalem. Arabs love to barter. It was always great to barter especially on a taxi to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem. The taxi's there are new luxury class vehicles.

For those that have a hard time dealing with NAFA or local buyers, Montgomery Fur, in Ogden, Utah will barter fur for supplies. Contact them for details, or see their catalog.

You are required to declare the "Fair Market Value" of your bartered items--services, for tax purposes. To do less is breaking the law. If you don't pay tax on bartered items-services you are a criminal.

Yup

Goats
Chicken
Ducks
Garden tilling
Fire wood
Trapping rights


Just added chimney cleaning

When I used to raise and train beagles and German shorthaired pointers, people would frequently offer to trade me firearms for pups and started dogs. I got lots of very nice firearms that way. Occasionally people would offer to trade me some real duds. I just turned them downs. None of the guns were ever reported as stolen. I had them checked. Twice, I had people offer to trade me snowmobiles for pups, I turned them down, because most Winters here there are only a few days you could use one. People frequently offered to trade me horses for pups. I have no use for a horse and don't want one.

People very frequently offer to trade birds and poultry to me for the pigeons and poultry I sell. I almost always turn them down because of the fear of disease. I do a strict quarantine on all new birds. Last Spring someone offered to trade me the prettiest kitten I have ever seen for a pair of chickens. It was some fancy Himalayan breed of cat. I had no real use for it and did not want another house cat. It was so beautiful, I actually kind of regret not getting it.

I traded a dozen button quail for about $450.00 worth of used tires and wheels, which would have been about $1800.00 new.

Keith

And we can assume you declared all this on your taxes, correct?

Of course he did and everyone else on this thread can be assumed to have filed appropriately.....except for pcr2.

Funny, that's what pcr2's wife says. Bahaha.

I trade goods and services pretty regularly. I recently traded am older Kubota garden tractor and snow-thrower attachment that needed some work for a nice Gravely tractor.

I clean a neighbor's chimney four or five times a year and he supplies me with a good amount of firewood.

I also work quite a bit with my landscaper when he gets bigger jobs. I recently used my Kubota back-hoe to tear down a series of commercial greenhouses for him. I dug a hole and buried the debris then graded the area so his guys could seed it. We trade hours. i keep track of everything. In return for my machine services some of his crew will help me out when I'm busy, especially in the winter when they aren't swamped with work.

And yes, I pay taxes on all of it.

Hahahaaaaaa of course Mr.IRS police man.

So when does it become alright to become just a little bit dishonest? If you are going to steal from the government then is it alright to steal a trap? Both are a crime, are they not? Stealing a trap is not a major event that is going to lane you in prison. So I guess it is not that big of a crime. Breaking the law is breaking the law. Is it like being a little bit pregnant? You are either a thief or you are not.

Sullivan K, I hope you've never driven a single mph over the speed limit, or slow rolled a stop sign or not used your blinker to signal turning into your driveway. Those are crimes, too, are they not? Otherwise you're throwing a lot of stones from your glass house.

Boy oh boy. I work Program Integrity and I dont even go around accusing people all willy nilly. Chill guy....we're all reporting appropriately. A good barter there wont be much to report since you expensed something of same market value of what you received.

Government steals from me every day.Go get on their case Mr. perfect.dont you have to go milk a donkey or something?

Seems like you ride a very tall horse!

Chris

At one time in my life when I did landscaping for a living, I had a regular customer who turned out to be a Chiropractor, and a good one at that.
He found out that I had back problems and offered to treat me in exchange for partial payment of landscaping work. I jumped at that opportunity.Great trade I thought. Turned out o be a viscous cycle of work induced pain followed by endless treatment. Fortunately I got out of the landscaping business.

I enjoy bartering. I think it is actually a good skill to have. Usually it is an even trade of some sort. If the world ever goes upside down which I don't think it will in my lifetime.(But I'm old) it will be the way business is done.

I own a tree service and last year I trimmed two large maples for a farmer for a 800# Angus steer, I would have normally charged $500 to do the trees, but when he offered the steer I was more tban happy to trade out. We've been eating good since January

We have a little 5 acre field on our property. Our neighbor grows corn on it and in return he plants and leaves a half acre of soy beans for wildlife.
We do not exchange any money, never have. If we get more snow than I can handle he will be here with a big tractor and clean things up.
We have him and his wife over a couple times a year for a nice supper. They take care of our chickens and outdoor wood boiler when we are out of town.
We help them as needed. It is very nice to have a neighbor a mile away that you can trust with anything. Not so common place anymore.

Zim

I barter all the time...for anything. Made some pretty good deals. Been screwed once or twice too but that’s the game. Used to trade vehicles a lot..hot rod/custom parts etc. made a lot of great deals. Been trading for traps lately and have scored many users up here in AK...I’d say a couple hundred traps in the few years we’ve been here. I don’t know why but trading gets me all excited...like gambling.

LOL !!!

I read a article a few days ago about California hiring more technocrats to start going after the ninety to one hundred and thirty Billion a year in black market money transactions they are not getting taxes on. I would guess that most of that market is done by illegal immigrants and their employers, l have to wonder if California will give them an exemption.? I have already talked to one person that has figured it will cost his business 18 thousand a year. He figures that is more than enough to finance a move to another state.

Not a lot of bartering but increasing as of late. Helping bale some hay for a guy I buy from and we trade sweat for hay. I also barter several quarts of maple syrup we make for items that others have, such as some veggies, straw, plowing a garden etc. Doing some limited ADC work gets some permissions as well.

Bryce

What a rude and asinine question.

And can we presume you legally trapped, hunted and tagged all the wildlife you took and paid taxes on all your earnings from trapping, correct?

Keith

And can we presume you declared all this on your taxes, correct?

Keith

As I read the comments an old family story came to my mind. My grandmother had two brothers that were the doctors in the this area for years. My grandma and grandpa were farmers and not rich by todays standards. Both of the doctors were well-to-do. One got cleaned out on Black Tuesday in '29. He came out $2500 in the hole. He was about to lose his house and farm. My grandma and grandpa were simple hard working farmers. She had saved egg and cream money buried in the back yard for years. She loaned my great uncle the $2500 he needed to satisfy the collectors.
Paying her back would have been relatively easy in normal times. But none of his patients had any money. He was bound by his oath to help the poor sick folks. The only pay they had was mostly fruits, vegetables and chickens all of which he and my grandma already had. Fortunately her love for her brother was more than the money. As times got better he repaid her every cent and even delivered two of my sisters, which was perhaps interest.

Determining the worth of items in a barter depends on demand for the product and the timing of the deal. A cup of cold water is worth more in a desert than in a fountain by the lake side. A free market in which people get to decide a commodities or services values is part of the foundation of our Great Constitutional Republic. Trading apples for services is not a fair market when only two people are involved, it becomes more of a free market when an exchange is set up so people are able to make the market liquid. Thus a scalper is able to maintain liquidity while trying to make a profit for his services. That helps do away with the confined use of scrip and keeps the market free. When people can park their investment in something like money that is backed by something like gold or silver, then people can have a certainty their world won't collapse around them. Trading apples for bit coin or fiat money is trade just based on the whim of what someone thinks a pie in the sky is worth.

Barter is not only a forgotten practice but an untaught practice. The basics of free enterprise is not taught as a general curriculum.

We can rest assured that in the end there will be a judgment and the exactor will be there also.

So when does it become alright to just go around questioning other people's honesty?

You should take the advice you gave on another thread and be less hypocritical.




Keith

I think I agree with what Pike River said.
I am a little confused on all this talk about bartering and tax law.
Let me give an explain why.
I own a car and it breaks down and needs repaired, so I trade it for a horse that I think is worth as much or more than the car is to me. My question is where do I put it on my income tax form. It is not wages because I am not working and getting paid for the horse. It is not a business profit or loss because I am neither a car dealer or a horse trader. I owned the car and traded it off for what I and the back yard mechanic who I traded it to for what we thought was of equal value to each of us. So where is the profit or loss even if I were a car dealer or horse trader?
To me that is like me needing to report to the government a trade I made yesterday when I gave a friend 2 - $5 bills and a $10 bill for his $20 dollar bill. That I think is exchanging one item for another of equal value and is not anything that needs reported to the government since it is neither wages, interest or a business profit or loss for either me or the guy I traded with. {Come to think of it my wife never gave me the $20. LOL}

I am not sure where someone is being even a little dishonest because they do not report all barters or trades they make.
One more example of what I did last week.
I went to the local salvage yard and got 4 or 5 scrap pieces of square tubing to use to make some heavy duty wolf swivels. I ask the foreman "how much?" and he told me "Don't worry about it. Next time you come in bring some scrap iron about the same weight." So I will take some old brake rotors in for the exchange. So I guess I am still bartering and I hope I am not breaking some government law by not reporting it.
Pete

Love to barter. The latest was a farmer that lets me trap called and asked if I would trap a couple woodchucks for him, I said sure. I thought since he lets me and my grandson have fun no problem. Last week I called and asked if he had any straw and where should I leave the money, he said trade for professional trapping services!
I used the straw for a hay ride for my daughters and grandkids last Friday and they had a blast.....Tax that!

You would record it on a schedule C as if you're a sole prop. Add up all the tomatoes, horses and mechanic work you received as your gross revenue then deduct all the ADC, tree trimming and pelts you bartered for them as your expenses and if you're like most you'll come out at a profit of about $0.00

that was how I did the math equal value exchange no profit is made no profit to tax.

Side bar from the discussion about ethics and all. Lol. When I lived in Washington i traded a nice riding mower for a fishing boat. No big deal i thought. I went the the courthouse to get the boat titled and they asked how i purchased it. Thinking i will just be legit about this and tell the truth and said i traded a lawnmower for it. I was told that you cannot trade "unlike" items. Meaning if i got a boat i needed to trade a boat. In turn what i was told i had to do was create a bill of sale for market price for each items and claim each of them as purchases and pay taxes on those items. Needless to say I had to have that explained to me a few different times and still didn't understand how it wasn't the state filing false documentation to claim taxes. After all of this I drew up the fraudulent paperwork and stated that i paid an imaginary $250 for the boat. Then i was told that I was going to have to pay taxes on fair market value not the imaginary number they told me to create. When it was all said and done i never did get tags for the boat. I ended up selling it for cash and creating an actual bill of sale for another boat and was able to get tags in minutes. One of the main reasons why i left Washington.

Interesting.

Ain't that the state where you have to PAY the state for the rain that lands on your property?

It is very expensive tax wise to live there. Especially when i worked in Portland and lived in Washington.

Back to bartering though I m always willing to trade and my ears perk up when someone says are you willing to trade. You never know what they are going to say. I like to play a guessing game kind of. Like will he offer hunting gear or a stereo system lol. I turn a lot down but always listed to what the offer is.

Virginia is quickly going toward the rain tax, unfortunately.