Anyone having issues with ebay and sales tax collection on coins?
zas107
Posts: 831 ✭✭✭
First, please no comments that violate the rules. I am simply asking if people are having trouble being charged taxes on coins, if coins are a non-taxable good in your state of purchase. Also, does anyone here have an exemption certificate on file, and are still being charged tax? If your answer is yes to either of the two questions have you been able to rectify the problem?
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I appreciate your question as it has only been a few years since eBay and online dealers started collecting taxes per rules of each individual state they deal with.
In CA, precious metals and bullion are taxed by in state companies/dealers and out of state companies/dealers if the total purchase is below $1500. Anything above it is tax exempt. I have never seen or heard of any inconsistency of this rule being applied. There is bickering among collectors about having to pay the tax if the purchase is below $1500, but I have not heard of anyone having to pay taxes if the total is north of $1500.
I hope others reply that would offer something more applicable to your situation.
BST: Tennessebanker, Downtown1974, LarkinCollector, nendee
Ebay has been collecting sales tax for coin sales in states that they are non-taxable for over a year.
Ebay has been notified about the problem and refuses to correct it.
It took me over 3 months and about 20 phone calls to get a refund from them.
I refuse to buy from the site anymore until they fix the issue.
There's a recent huge thread on this topic.
I have been getting taxed on coin purchases lately, even though I live in a state that does NOT tax coins AND I have a tax exempt certificate on file with Ebay. Ebay customer service has agreed I am correct that there is a problem, and I am NOT the only one that has recently complained about this issue. Ebay has yet to remedy the issue and credit my account for the erroneous taxes collected.
I’ve had several million dollars in purchases from eBay after the tax changes went into effect with no issue, but as of 10 days ago or so they are adding tax to every purchase. And coins are not taxable in my state. @PRIZ430 hope you get it resolved. eBay customer service is arduous to deal with.
I sell coins on eBay and have noticed tax collected from some buyers, mostly western states and maybe some in the NE. But as a seller I never even notice this if I don’t look closely - eBay manages all of it and I don’t have any say or influence as a seller. I had one item that was already pricy and was shocked to see what someone paid including the tax. Then I sent it to California and it took a month to get there - I used to live in SF Bay Area but don’t think I could move back - all Carolina boy now!! Love the Appalachian mountains - if you haven’t been then you cannot comment!!
@zas107 Unless you want to spend hours on the phone with ebay and wait months for your money you are best off to make sure to pay with a credit card. Once you get your coin and make sure everything is okay call your credit card company and report the sales tax as a fraudulent charge, they will remove the tax.
eBay manages the tax collection, but sellers pay for it as eBay collects the seller's fee from the seller on state tax.
I am not sure this is true - I will check - but I once refunded an item and sold later to a buyer who was charged tax and I got the same payment from eBay. If they added the tax into the cost of the item, yes the 12.5% fee would be higher - but I think they calculate it only on the listed cost and not what the buyer pays - same for shipping.
But I’m gonna check - they change policies quicker than than the wife changes shoes so you might be right but that’s not been my experience so far
I recently bought some coins from Govmint.com and was charged sales tax. Ohio repealed the tax on silver, gold, platinum and palladium bullion and coins October 1. After reviewing a link I sent them concerning the tax repeal. They have credited me back the tax. Pretty drama free!
been waiting on my refund over 3 months now, called 4 times already
eBay adds the state tax to the selling price and the eBay fee is based on selling price plus state tax. If the state has a sales tax, it cost me more to sell the coin. The shipping was paid through Pay Pal. See actual example below:
Selling Price $720.48
shipping 0
Sales tax $50.43
eBay fee based on $770.91
Fee Rate 12.55%
final value fee .30
Total eBay fees $ 97.05
You have to request to speak to a supervisor at ebay to fix the problem. It is not a permanent fix only a fix for tax currently and incorrectly applied to not taxable purchases. I usually wait and make one call to catch all purchases up to date. So far I have always been refunded for coin tax I paid, my state exempts tax on coin purchases. It's frustrating and it sometimes take more than one call as it has to get forwarded to the "tax department" who you cannot talk to. After the wait for the tax department to make the fix, I sometimes have to follow up with another call to get them rolling.
On one occasion, the rep was able to refund me the tax paid on the spot.
Keep in mind that a tax exempt certificate applies to items for resale, not to items tax exempted by your state. Two different animals. However a tax exempt certificate should automatically apply to coin purchases that are ALSO exempt from sales tax by your state.
"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see?” - Bob Dylan
Which is like 7% of like 8% which is like 0.5%
Please take a moment to weep for Walmart and every mom and pop store in the country who also have to pay for payment processing on sales tax collection.
From an IT side, sales tax is a nightmare. The various taxing authorities and legislatures are CONSTANTLY making small tweaks to the laws and rules.
(I'm no longer working on that project, but) We used a vendor just to handle the upload of sales tax exemption certificates with electronically filled out forms - and we were getting software updates every month, even with the majority of the code downloaded dynamically from our vendor's site.
The tax rules are rarely written to match up with eBay's small number of categories, making it much harder to ensure you are charging the correct rate
For example:
Texas Administrative Code
TITLE 34 PUBLIC FINANCE
PART 1 COMPTROLLER OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
CHAPTER 3 TAX ADMINISTRATION
SUBCHAPTER O STATE AND LOCAL SALES AND USE TAXES
RULE §3.336 Currency, Certain Coins, and Gold, Silver, and Platinum Bullion
Your $20 DE is exempt under a(3) + b. Put that in a fancy bezel to make it an item of jewelry, and it IS taxable under b(1)
If you list it under the Coins category, how is eBay to know???
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Correspondence from ebay to a friend...
thanks @lkeigwin
eBay is a big enough company- they ought to be doing a better job dealing with this. On the other hand, it's clearly not a simple fix like some people here seem to believe.
There is a reason why even the largest companies outsource this kind of specialty coding to an expert provider.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
And those "specialty coding experts" (developers of tax collecting software) were the ones who lobbied heavily for on-line state tax collections.
"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see?” - Bob Dylan
I have talked to three eBay reps about charging sales tax for purchases. Each time they tell me they will refund the sales tax. Its been going on for three months. Still no refund. I even gave the the Florida statue number.
Sure don't like paying final vale fees on the collected tax.
Many successful BST transactions with dozens of board members, references on request.
Been having issues with Ohio and have talked to eBay 4 times with no luck so far.
I even said it’s in your best interest to not charge sales tax when it’s exempt.
@MrBluster "Its been going on for three months."
@Weather11am "have talked to eBay 4 times with no luck so far."
@ifthevamzarockin "over 3 months and about 20 phone calls to get a refund"
They know that the more difficult they make it to get your money back most buyers will give up and ebay gets to keep the money. They have known about the problem for over a year and can't even streamline the return process. Half of the ebay CSR's will tell you "I have never heard of any problems with sales tax" the others "will say we know about the problem."
How hard would it be for ebay to let their own customer service team we have a problem and here is the quick fix for a rapid refund?
Bottom line:
If ebay was losing as much on every sale as they are collecting illegally they would have fixed the problem in 2 weeks.