Is this ebay fee well known to those here that sell there?
gtstang
Posts: 1,734 ✭✭✭✭✭
Being charged
a fee for taxes apparently paid by the buyer seems to be going a bit far.
0
gtstang
Posts: 1,734 ✭✭✭✭✭
gtstang
Posts: 1,734 ✭✭✭✭✭
gtstang
Posts: 1,734 ✭✭✭✭✭
Comments
In my opinion, they started that right after the sellers started giving product away at a super low price and charging exhorbitant S/H to cover the loss. They just continued with the taxes when they started having to collect them also.
Jim
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest....Abraham Lincoln
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.....Mark Twain
Yes, it is normal. It caught me by surprise too when I sold a big ticket item. I don't agree with it but I suppose they use it to pay the employees that deal with collecting sales tax.
Companies that process payments charge for that based on the total amount of the transaction. It's no surprise that businesses account for that in their fees.
I just thought of a good idea!
Let's start a petition to make Wayfair pay the collection fees!
Personally, I think it should be deducted from the tax collected. Why should we have to pay to collect the states sales tax?
Very typical of Ebay, although the fees charged on the sale illustrated would be in the neighborhood of $1.30, it's not much but at thousands of sales per day, Ebay is making big bucks. Still doesn't make it right to charge the seller a fee on taxes. How do you say double taxation?
Every business in the country deals with the same thing. There is a cost to accepting online payments.
The fee is based on the amount of money transferred. What that money goes to is irrelevant. Sellers pay that fee on their shipping cost too, along with many other costs.
How do you say double taxation?
It's a fee, not a tax. As well, it's the buyer who pays the sales tax, not the seller.
This. Paypal did the same thing. Visa and Mastercard do the same thing.
If you collect $100 with a credit card, the processor charges a fee on $100. They don't care if it was $100 tax-free or $80 plus a 25% tax. Every business that doesn't use only cash operates this way.
It's actually the opposite of double taxation. The state collects the sales tax. The more of a fee you pay on it, the less net profit you make, and the taxes you pay actually drop.
They charge for payment processing. Period. If you pay your income or property taxes with a credit card, there will be a transaction fee assessed. When you shop at Walmart pays a fee based on your purchase AND the sales tax. When you buy in Amazon, the seller pays a fee based on your purchase, the sales tax, the shipping, and the sales tax on the shipping... and if you are overseas, the VAT and any import duties. You can hate it, but it's not an ebay thing.
NY State requires the collection of sales tax in shipping and handling. I'd be willing to bet that the other 49 states do also.
Now if I could only get them to not collect tax when they aren’t supposed to, that would be great.
If they see it as a processing fee then it should be the same no matter what the final cost is. If it was a $7000 plus item then that would be an additional $50 plus fee.
Imagine walking into a shop and while processing your order, you're told there's an additional fee on the taxes you just paid.
I don't like it, but that's just my two cents on it.
When you buy something in a shop, the shop's expenses are included in the price you paid even if they are not itemized.
feepay...............
When you pay with a CC there is a fee involved. Let's say your item cost $100 with 7% sales tax which makes $107. When eBay remits the $7 sales tax to the state, the state likely expects the full $7 which means that eBay eats the fee that the CC company took or they pass it on to you.
Not to mention, they handle everything having to do with collecting the tax and remitting it. According to taxfoundation.org, there are over 11,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the US. As an eBay seller, how eager would you be to educate yourself about all of them (and staying current with updates and changes to tax laws) in order to avoid paying a fee to eBay to do it for you?
The will continue to get away with charging a fee on a pass thru sales tax.
IMO totally wrong.
Somehow these always seem to end up as a class action suit—and we hear about it years later as a settlement with the defendant claiming no wrongdoing but will pay big $$$$ to settle.
Ok- so they stop charging a fee on the sales tax that they pass though. And add a fee for collecting/remitting it.
Happy now?
Imagine the store says 3% fee for paying with a credit card instead of cash. Get what that 3% gets applied to. Hint, it’s everything including the sales tax.
They don't care or understand because EBay is the first time they are the seller instead of the buyer. They are simply gnorant as to how Visa, MC or Amex have worked forever.
They should see the second fee charged for processing a refund if they want to get mad.
https://merchantcostconsulting.com/lower-credit-card-processing-fees/are-you-paying-a-credit-card-refunds-fee/
Ebay is charging 12.9% and that can make a large difference for high value sales vs. The 3% you quote.
If the state is charging 6% tax, then that dollar amount is being charged an additional 12.9% on top by eBay.
They can obviously do what they want with their business but I did not know they charged additional fees on taxes.
eBay's charge is for providing a service, just as the cc company charge is. They are providing different services, it's no surprise the fees are different.
The post office charges to deliver packages. Then that dollar amount is being charged an additional 12.9% on top by eBay? That's sure a silly way to look at it.
There are no additional fees on taxes. There is just one fee on the total dollar amount of the transaction the credit card company processes. It's not relevant how those dollars get distributed for purposes of this fee.
Interesting side note.....
Even in a state that doesn't charge tax on coins purchases most of them charge sales tax on the shipping charge. I sell a lot of stuff with $1.00 shipping and even in those states the buyer pays tax on that $1.00. Usually it's only 4 to 7 cents and only adds 1 cent or less to the fees I'm charged, I pay the fees on the total sale including the tax on the shipping.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
Would you feel better if eBay instead split their final value fee from the payment processing fee so you only paid 3% on the sales tax, but then they hike up the final value fee enough such that net you pay even more than you currently do? Also, you can invest in a store subscription and significantly reduce those fees. But then that's a fee charged to result in lower fees charged, and now it's head explosion time.
Yep! and they gave you a good deal (so to speak) around last November which was when I sold the last items on ebay when I totaled it up there was another $2.00 added to the charge for SOMETHING that I never figured out what it was?
And if a buyer sends an item back for some reason and you have to issue a refund ebay keeps all the FEES! they don't refund.
You can get shipping discounts via ebay if you use their label service, that helps on bigger items. But whatever you charge in shipping, even if you hand the money to a UPS service, FedEx, or the Postal service ebay charges a few for that amount too.
I never had an ebay store but from time to time I have sold stuff there, but I doubt doing that anymore.
And now the government is involved and its my understanding that ebay will issue you a 1099 for tax on your sells, and so does paypal, I'm not sure how all that's going to work, but its more of a mess then I want to fool with.
"I Prefer Dangerous Freedom Over Peaceful Slavery"
Thomas Jefferson!
Not true.
I just had a return and the fees were refunded.
Same here. My last return was several months ago, the variable portion of final value fee I originally paid was refunded. eBay did keep the 30 cent per order fixed charge.
This is all explained on a "Fee credits" help page on the eBay website.
More fun to just bash them.
Well, that's good news. At last reports I heard about which would have been around late November of 2021 was that only the SOLD price was refunded.
I do know that I wasn't happy when I mailed a vintage model Train set to California and ebay TOOK 10% of the near $50.00 shipping charge, then there was those unexplained $2.00 fees.
Several problems I had when I was selectively selling a few items from my mothers estate last year, we tried to sell off her items on site, but she had a lot of WORKING vintage stuff and she lived out in the country, so I picked 8 or 10 items that I thought I could do better selling them on ebay, and at the sold price I did great, but with the high price of shipping, ebay fees, paypal fees,
and the trouble It wasn't worth it, but the items were household things not a little coin. In the end I think the stuff I sold should have just been given away, or trashed. To many people from to many angles took to much of the money.
Here is another beef I have, that's along the same lines.
Local pawn shops around here. You go in with the Gold, its yours! You've weighed it, you know what their sell price for it is, you expect them to make money, and they offer you 20% you can kick around a bit and maybe get 30% of market price leaving them to make the 70 to 80% on my Gold!
Now, with ebay on occasion I'll by stuff off, like Junk yard car parts and a Lincoln Cents maybe.
But, there is two many people making to much money off my stuff on ebay leaving me with very little in the end for my items.
Every listing I put up for my mothers items in the end I felt totally ripped off. I would not let it happen again.
I've been an ebay member sense Feb 2000, I really liked it back in the day when I sold stuff, before paypal before the flat rate 10% fees, before they charged fees for me to hand the post office some money, before postal rates went through the roof.
You know china doesn't have to pay those high shipping rates? They pay cents on the dollar.
I can't deal like that.
Glad to hear you got your fees back.
"I Prefer Dangerous Freedom Over Peaceful Slavery"
Thomas Jefferson!
A lot of what is posted here about eBay is either an incomplete explanation or just not true at all. No real reason for it when you can almost always find the info on eBay's website.
It was also true in 2021. Paypal didn't refund fees. EBay always has under managed payments.
The US has the cheapest postal rates in the world. China subsidizes exporters. No country has cheaper postal rates than the US. It's not even close.
Oh wow.
eBay fees and shipping costs can be found online and completed sales searches on eBay are easy to do. The only way to be surprised by them is to not have taken the time to check them out before putting stuff up for sale.
Not everything is a good candidate for listing on eBay.
It's a waste of time. Haters gonna hate.
Yeah, I don't get it. If eBay's goal is to take advantage of people, why do they offer discount postage? Why aren't they offering it at the USPS retail rate and keeping the difference for themselves? If you go to the counter at the post office, it'll cost you over $7 to ship a one ounce coin with tracking and $20 insurance. eBay charges 53 cents.
Yeah. But the eBastards are probably keeping 3 cents.
That's not the way the math works. If you buy something at 20% of your selling price, the gross profit (not considering any overhead) is 400%, not 80%.
That is idiotic.
They charge a fee on sales taxes!
But then deduct the full amount to remit to appropriate state!
Idiotic
BHNC #203
Visa, Mastercard, AMEX...
I think the real gripe you are missing about ebay on this is they are charging the full FVF on the tax just like they do on shipping. As an example I sold a $500 coin to a buyer in Ca. and the fee on just the collection of sales tax was $4.07.
Raise your prices by $5. Problem solved.