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New Internet Sales Tax
jwitten
Posts: 5,077 ✭✭✭✭✭
Well, just had my first experience with it. I usually stock up on double eagles when someone like APMEX has a good price on them AND I have a bonus ebay offer, like today. Went to buy one, and all of a sudden I'm being charged tax, which makes it not a good deal anymore. Dang. This is going to have a pretty big impact on my business.
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The lumbering train will grind to a halt.
Get a resale license as you should have one anyway if you are in business.
I had the same thing happen to me. I am not a dealer so I am not going to get a tax id, but my coin buying will decrease
How does it work? Do I have to tell the seller that I have a resell license, and wait for them to take the tax away before I pay, or does ebay have a way you can plug it on and avoid it all together?
Yes, you contact the seller and tell them you have a resale license.
Hopefully, in the future, ebay will let you put you a resale number in their system so that it is automated
You need to apply the business license from your County to obtain your business resell license IMO.
I bought a double eagle yesterday, got 100 e bucks, gold is up 21 dollars today-life is good
What seller did you buy from? Were you charged tax? I was ready to buy 3, but was going to be charged about $75 extra per coin in tax, so passed.
bought from apmex, no, I wasn't charged a sales tax, there is no sales tax in my state. I bought one, but will buy probably 4 more in the next 2 months to max out my e bucks
As a small business owner with a significant % of my business coming from product sales, online sales tax will save me a bunch of money . Many of my clients will still purchase products from me as long as I match online prices which meant matching the price and eating the sales tax. It also makes me happy that my states tax revenue will increase and other local small businesses can be more competitive with on line retailers (I.e. massive warehouse with robot employees)
Even if you have a resale number, I have not been able to get around the sales tax issue through ebay.
I was wondering how that would even work. It seems like it would be a hassle for the seller to have to verify, etc.
Works Just like ANY retail business anywhere.
@jwitten: I agree fully. The tax will certainly has put a crimp in my purchases online. I deduct the 6% from my bids to cover it, and win few lots-very few. May have to hit the show circuit whenever I return to the States or find other venues. I probably could qualify for a dealer exemption, but as I am abroad most of the time, I just don't to deal with the bureaucratic paper work and hassles. In my situation, as yours as stated, it seems simpler just to pass.
...and I would tell the Ebay buyer to pound sand. Who needs the extra work?
Who needs customers/business? EOC is correct on this one.
That's good old eBay for you - elaborate, complicated coding that lacks even the most basic features or the ability to address obvious contingencies.
Probably not a bad idea to get back to posting coins.
Then you simply aren't a good businessman. They just send you a pdf copy of their resale form, you remove the sales tax from their invoice and you're done. Easy peasy.
Any real dealer does this all the time as a fair percentage of their business is dealer to dealer. I'm going to a show tomorrow in NY and I'll bring a half dozen resale forms to give to any dealer I buy from.
I agree with this. I've wondered for years why ebay doesn't allow you to enter a resale number.
I'll hold my response as the forum is under much tighter moderation than it has been previously. RogerB has been banned as has PerryHall.
What just happen?
Seriously???? What happened?? @PerryHall is one of my favorites, and I do a lot of repeat business with him!
FYI: per APMEX website ( eBay is included)
STATES WHERE WE CURRENTLY COLLECT SALES TAX
We are currently charging sales tax in some form on orders shipped to the following states:
Alabama, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin
Probably because the aren't uniform from state to state and the states may not give them access. If/when eBay gets hacked then 10 people will all have the same resale number.
MY COINS FOR SALE AT https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/other/bajjerfans-coins-sale/3876
When? What did I miss?
That's a darn shame about Roger B. The posts of the letters/documents he found on the NNP were truly interesting and provided information that I haven't found on the other Coin Forums. I hope he doesn't bail this forum like some others when his banishment is lifted. It will be a hassle to search out any new haunts for his posts if he does
Why don't you have Coinpalace buy it for you and have them send it to you? That way you BEAT THE SYSTEM!!!
Unless the Internet ASA monitors this site looking to Audit said situations.
Too much trouble for the most part. Looks like APMEX does not have tax yet in a state I have some relatives... so I could change my address to them, then just buy it myself, ship to a relative, then pick up when I visit. Of course, all states are going to be added soon.
Is this just ebay or is it going to all affect all avenues like GC, HA, Stacks, etc.?
It will affect all sales avenues, unfortunately.
It depends on how they write the laws. Some states crafted what were nicknamed "Amazon laws" trying to target larger entities. In those cases, small-time sellers might be exempt. But big sellers, like the ones you name, will probably end up being made to toe the line.
This is one case where I wish they would put forth a national solution: one national internet sales tax. It would be clearer for everyone. It would also level the playing field for everyone.
Yikes, obviously not an ideal situation
Interesting. My state is among those listed. I just entered a "Buy it now" from APMEX (without purchasing), and the "confirm" page does NOT show sales tax...
Never let a bad tax get in the way of good judgement.
If you live in a state where there is no sales tax, like Delaware, they should not be charging you sales tax if you are paying for the shipping. The distinction is that when you pay the shipping the title changes in your state, and its tax laws apply.
If you live in a state where purchases of $1,000 or more on U.S,. coins (or some other threshold), you should not be paying the tax if you make a purchase of that size.
It'll show up on the "pay now" screen. That's where my 6% "tax" got tacked on.
I was trying to buy a double eagle and they were still charging the tax
I thought that I had read where eBay was going to deal with collecting the sales tax?
If your state has no sales tax rule on coins or bullion do you have to collect it in the states that do and send it to them?
And should sellers in states with no coin sales tax have to collect sales tax on sales to states with sales tax and remit these collections to other states? Doesn't seem fair (or legal?) for one state to impose this burden on another.
Couldn't we just buy from dealers in states with coin and bullion sales tax exemptions? There are many now.
The states mentioned are placing transactional locus in the state of the buyer. So if you are the seller, your state sales tax law is irrelevant. If you sell to someone in one of the listed states, eBay will collect the sales tax for THAT state, regardless of where you are located.
This has been recently vetted by the Supreme Court an is, in fact, legal which is why all the states are changing their sales tax laws.
It's not where the dealer is with these new tax laws, it is where the buyer is. If you are in a state that passed a new sales tax law governing sales INTO the state, then you can not avoid the tax unless your state has seller size restrictions or something like that.
I got it. It's the point of delivery that matters.
Can exempt states preserve the tax free sales to their own residents? Without a Federal law, how can anyone compel a state to collect a sales tax on it's own residents when they have specifically passed a law exempting these items from sales tax?
Maybe the solution is to try to push the states that haven't enacted a numismatic exemption to do so. I know that this has been an ongoing effort by ICTA and they have achieved much success with maybe half? of the states now offering partial or complete exemptions. Numismatists have been able to change the rules in some states for themselves (through ICTA), so maybe this is the only effective action that we can take.
If you have a resale certificate I don't think that will stop eBay from charging the sales tax. You would have to provide the resale cert to the seller and they would have to refund the sales tax back to you.