Ebay charging fees on taxes collected
Jayman1982
Posts: 467 ✭✭✭
As of July 1, for Canadian sellers, ebay has imposed the mandatory collection of provincial taxes on every item sold, charged to the buyer. Fine, whatever...But I noticed I was receiving slightly less in take home $$$ lately as a seller. I went into the fee breakdown of a recent sale and was ticked off to see that ebay is applying the 12.9% selling fee to the taxes they are collecting on my behalf. Is it just me or is that plain wrong, like from an actual legal standpoint? Why am I on the hook for paying 12.9% of the taxes collected? Is it the same in the States, do you pay fees when ebay collects taxes on your behalf?
After some math I can now see that 12.9% actually works out to be 19.7% in the end!!
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I’m not surprised since they do it for the shipping charge as well. I’m about done with Ebay
Same here. RIP Ebay.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
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At least with the shipping charge I can add a handling fee to compensate. I want to be done with ebay, but unfortunately selling through social is painfully slow and not as far reaching.
Same happens here in the states. I’m no fan of it, but I don’t think they’re breaking any US laws. They’re the middleman and providing a “tax collection” service on behalf of the seller (including presumably distributing those taxes eventually to the states that should get them), so in their eyes they’re collecting their fee for providing that service.
Myslabs had and may still have verbiage stating that it’s the sellers responsibility to account for taxes because they only collect it if seller and purchaser are in the same state.
Jim
Canadian here... but I sell most of my items to US buyers. I dreaded this implementation as it has been a big pain with my US sales. Some states and provinces have high taxes and this has definitely increased my overall fees into the 15+% range.
I never could understand why some companies add these little sneaky profit taking fees... they certainly piss ppl off and it feels like a death by a thousand small fees.
If EBay starts reporting sales to the CRA (I assume they already do) and I get a tax bill like what is occurring in the US... that will likely be the tipping point. I am a hobbyist and this accounting and taxation shite is taking away the pleasure of collecting.
I'm mostly a buyer, and this has definitely impacted my buying. I'm not willing to go as high on purchases on average as I am factoring in the tax into my total cost now. I'm not sure if sellers are seeing any pain, but I would think they are essentially eating a good portion of this new cost if buyers are being smart and considering the tax.
eBay is sneaky though... the tax included price doesn't show up until you check out, so in the heat of bidding, you're not seeing the total cost.
Most optimal for me is to buy from the U.S. from a seller with decent shipping that doesn't using the global shipping center, and the cost falls below the threshold where you'll be hit with duties/taxes.
Buyers/Sellers are getting hit on both ends now. Used to be that the seller was the person getting bent over on each transaction, now with taxes being collected and sellers paying fees on it, the cost of buying has gone up as well. I had a guy the other day send an offer for one of my cards ($800) and told me he couldnt go any higher because of the taxes he had to pay, I was just the opposite and couldnt go any lower than my asking price ($900) because of the fees I had to pay. Its getting tough out there
I reach out to every potential buyer and ask if they want to deal off ebay. As a buyer myself I ask first. I also post my contact info in each listing's photos. Despite all those measures it is frustrating how many people refuse to save money. I guess there are shady folks out there, but if both parties have a great feedback score, what's the harm? I haven't been burned yet...
I can totally sympathize with that buyer. I am doing stuff like that too with my limits. At the same time, I totally understand if sellers don't want to part with cards at my prices. It doesn't hurt to ask though.
I am seeing a lot of the cards I'm following in my watch list just sitting there, so it's definitely harder to move stuff.
How do you reach buyers to make an off-eBay offer? I don't think any sellers have ever reached out to me for an off-eBay offer except after we've already made a transaction, and then they know who I am.
Ebay keeps requesting my tax ID number for anything I sell over 600.00 that they can send to the IRS... I am not a seller on EBay as of last year..... so I am not giving them a thing.... I will never sell on ebay again.
You aren’t selling on eBay but they are asking for your tax id? Maybe I am not following….
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
I dont think its a question of if people want to save money, its a question of being permanently banned or suspended for even asking to do a deal off ebay. Not sure how often ebay checks in on it, but I did it one time and got a warning from ebay that future attempts at doing a deal off ebay may result in being banned
Whenever I get a best offer I can see their username, I then contact them "not about an item" and start a dialogue that way.
Is the warning you are referring to when you try and send a message and it gets blocked for trying to deal outside ebay? But then you just spell a word differently and it goes through? If so, I have had about 1000 warnings in the last decade with no repercussions thus far.
Or is there a more sinister warning that I have luckily avoided?
I have made deals with several off EBay that I ‘met’ there. One has been going for several years now. No one likes dealing on there if they can avoid it.
"I guess there are shady folks out there . . ."
Oh the irony.
Not sure how you get away with this so often but they can definitely access your DMs and even have ways to detect you writing and spelling out your email address or phone number. They definitely ban/suspend people for making deals off ebay for items you have listed.
Personally I'd rather keep the deal above board and ON ebay because as a seller I'm protected from any shady actions people come up with. Saving a few cents isn't worth losing a few dollars. If it's for a large sum of money, even more reason to keep it protected.
I have not sold anything on eBay in 2 years and could not be happier
It's not really a few cents, it's thousands in fees over a year...
I'm not trying to be facetious here, but what protection does ebay offer their sellers?
Totally. I don't really understand any of this talk. You could get permanently banned from EBAY easily. They do not play around anymore. Plus even with PP all transactions are taxable and reported now. Easier and safer just to keep the deals on EBAY. In person deals are a different story.
So it's okay to cheat a company that's providing a service out of thousands of dollars a year because you don't agree with their fee structure?
My success rate at actually getting people to deal off ebay is more like 5-10%, so the majority of my sales are done through their site. Do I sleep well at night? Yes, I don't have a problem with it.
Yep. Obeying terms of service is for losers. Excuse me while I try to get my trimmed/counterfeit cards into PSA holders.
Within the next couple of weeks I’ll be retiring from selling on EBay. Would of earlier if not for PSA and 16 months. Once the last 20 cards are sold it’s sayonara