Watches, baseball cards,
cupcakes and cookies,
artwork, a journal
entry, a bike, and even
a dog all found new
homes last month at Main
Street Family Dentistry
in Tupelo, Miss.
Dentist Harry Rayburn
and his staff accepted
the tokens as a barter
from 60 patients on a
single day in May in
exchange for fillings,
extractions, and
cleanings, mainly from
uninsured
patients. "A lot of
them were extractions
that had been hurting
for two or three months
and they hadn't been
able to get to a dentist
because of the cost,"
Rayburn says.
As spare
cash becomes harder to
come by for many
families, bartering is
an increasingly
attractive alternative
to putting expenses on a
credit card. Here's a
guide to the low-cost
world of bartering.
Save money.
Instead of buying your
kid that new video game,
you can trade for a new
one,. As people start to
spend more money to put
food on the table and
gas in the tank, they
find other ways to save
money.
Be specific.
A Charlotte attorney
offering to prepare a
simple
will and healthcare
proxy in exchange for
the services of an
experienced floor sander
or painter. A San
Francisco parent
interested in trading
two sets of luggage for
beer or wine for her
son's baptism party. A
painter in Nashville
willing to proffer his
services for a Harley.
These are just a few of
the recent offerings on
the Internet, which
reported 130,243 barter
posts in May. That's
twice as many as last
year. Some people will
give a laundry list of
items they are willing
to trade or services
they know how to provide
and ask people to send
them similar lists they
are able to trade. Others
list a single thing they
are able to provide or a
single item they are
looking for. A key is to
always be specific so
that people know what
you have and what you
want."
List details.
"The more information
you can put in the ad,
it cuts down on phone
tag." People have bartered for
eyeglasses, dinners out,
dental work, and auto
repairs. If you're
mailing a package, you
must also decide who
will pay for shipping.
And consider posting a
picture. Ads with
photographs tend to get
more responses.
Assign value.
Americans are used to
giving merchandise a
dollar value, so
determining exactly how
many DVDs a dental
filling is worth can be
tricky. The newer the
content in terms of
popularity, like the
latest movie or CD, the
faster it moves. And
classics will go, too -
and game-trading. You have to
list the condition [of
your merchandise]
appropriately, if it's
reasonably listed and
you don't overprice it,
stuff goes fast."
Consider
taxes. Income
from bartering is
taxable, and bartering
exchanges are required
to report transactions
to the Internal Revenue
Service. Businesses or
trades people can deduct
costs incurred to
perform the work that
was bartered. But small,
informal, and
noncommercial
arrangements generally
slide under the radar of
the IRS. The consumer
end of it has always
been a very gray area
because there is no
reporting that takes
place, so the IRS has no
way of tracking those
transactions and the
people themselves
probably don't have a
receipt. If you make a
profit, then it would be
a taxable event. If you
sell it for less than
you paid for it, then it
would not be a taxable
event because you are
not making money.
