My boyfriend’s parents who live in Florida sent us $1000 as a gift. His step mother accidentally sent it as a goods and services payment and not friends and family. I called PayPal at the time of the transaction and the person I spoke with (spoke English, but not well and very hard to understand) simply refunded the fee, did not suggest refunding payment, and having them resend it and said it was corrected. So, I thought it was handled/corrected at that time. That was in October and the amount was $1000, so now I’ve gotten a 1099 k from PayPal which they’ve also sent to the irs. I called them to address the issue again and they say they can’t correct it and I basically have to just either come up with the 1000 now to send back to them (which I don’t have) or operate as if I sold a good or service and pay taxes on the money as if it were income. It is unreasonable that they would have someone who is clearly incompetent handle the issue in the first place and also unreasonable that this issue cannot be corrected on their end. It’s also unreasonable that someone sending you money has the ability to essentially report a payment made to you as income for you and you as the owner of the account have no ability to remove the option of someone sending you a payment for goods and services if you do not use PayPal to sell goods and services. Has anyone else had this issue and would they be interested in joining a class action lawsuit? I have a feeling, since PayPal is unable to fix the issue and clearly doesn’t train or hire competent staff, that there have likely been thousands of fees paid in error and “income” erroneously reported to the irs resulting in a lot of hassle and loss for customers.
