State Tax incorrectly charged and I can't get it back from Ebay
I purchased several items that are state tax exempt but was charged anyway.
For some of the items, I contacted Phone support, for others I contacted Ebay for Business on Facebook.
In all cases I was told a request would be submitted to the tax department and could take up to 60 days.
I waited 70 days, no refund. I contacted Ebay for Business on Facebook and asked why no refund after 60 days and was told the request was sent to the wrong department and he would submit another request to the right department and I would receive a refund within 60 days. The support group has no contact with the tax group so cannot provide any kind of status.
I have over eight purchases and have not received a refund on any of them. I've been waiting over 60 days on most of them.
What can I do to get my money back?
redmodelt
·2 years agoLook at the category's the coins were listed under and compare to other listings that tax was not charged. Might be a clue why you are getting charged sale tax. Not all category's would trigger not paying sales tax.
All anyone here can do is make suggestions, we are not eBay employees so the people reading this may not have any information to provide unless someone seeing this has been there did this.
You might ask here: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Coins-Paper-Money/ct-p/1114
Someone there may have been through the same thing and has some advice.
albertabrightalberta
·2 years agoAre you buying foreign coins?
jsam1776
OP2 years agoNo, U.S. coins. The exemption is valid and most of the time ebay does not charge tax. Maybe wrong category or whatever, I understand the accidental charge. What I don't understand is why 60 days then another 60 days to get my money.
Would you have any advice on how I can get my money back?
albertabrightalberta
·2 years agoI don't know whether this is worth the work but if you're sure your (exempt) items were taxed, you could file for an abatement through your own Florida department of revenue.
monica-sells
·2 years agoA single form to submit to the state:
Form DR-26N (Instructions – Application for Refund) provides the information and documentation required for some common refund claims. You may choose to submit the required information and documentation electronically instead of providing paper copies. Contact Refunds at (850) 617-8585 for more information.
I believe you can also do it online....(not positive)
https://floridarevenue.com/Forms_library/current/dr26s.pdf
I do not know for sure, but I can't see how ebay can refund state tax collected.....just my opinion based on how the collection system works.....
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years ago@jsam1776
Spoken by an EBay coin dealer, I've spent $75k on coins on EBay in the past 18 months, I've sold about $150k in the past 18 months. I live in Illinois and we have one of the broadest sales tax exemptions for domestic/foreign coinage/bullion/numismatic items
Category. Category. Category.
Details. Details. Details.
It does not matter what the item you are buying is. It matters how the item is described in the prescribed fields of EBay data. If the seller does not input or select the correct specific fillable data, EBay will not know your items are non taxable. EBay will blame the seller. EBay clearly states the seller is responsible for everything in their listings. EBay is not liable for the sellers mistakes. The seller's negligence has identified the item as one that qualifies as taxable under your state law. This is an unfortunate truth. EBay's system is automated and at times convaluted. However it's the sellers responsibility to describe/define the item as PRECISELY and IN DEPTH as possible, which will aid in determining proper taxability (or lack thereof)
99% of the problem is the category an item is listed in. 1% of the problem is the item specs the seller inputs (those fillable fields you see like "Certification: _____", "Fineness: _____", "Denomination:______")
Examples:
-Commemorative Coins are legal tender per the US Mint. It literally spells it out on the COA. However, the Commemorative Coins Category is notorious for being taxed. There are certain fillable fields that I have noticed that lead to items being able to be exempted. I believe they are denomination and possibly fineness/purity. Maybe composition as well? Honestly I'm not sure even today ... it has appeared to be a cluster so I assume every item I buy in Commems category will be charged sales tax.
-Bullion is non taxable in my state and in many states. However, there are limitations... state laws often specify required fineness to be considered bullion and also may limit the metals covered. Some states won't cover Copper bullion, Platinum bullion, Palladium bullion. Or it needs to be a minimum fineness of .95 or .995 or something of the sort. The details may cause the item to be charged sales tax.
-items in exonumia or fantasy coins are often taxable.
-items in non coins categories are taxable. A 1983/1984/1988/1992/1995/1996 Olympics commem dollar listed under some form of sports memorabilia/history category for olympics memorabilia is taxable. (Had that happen)
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years ago99.99999999% of the time you are CORRECTLY charged sales tax on an INCORRECTLY described/categorized item
jsam1776
OP2 years agoI'm sorry for any confusion, though I understand the problem of why I was charged but I was hoping to find an answer as to how I can get my money back.
stainlessenginecovers
·2 years agoWhat you are being told is:
if the seller input the wrong information, you CAN'T get your money back through ebay. You will have to file with your state...as another poster gave you the information.
The '60 days' is just to get you off the phone; reps have no ability to 'do anything' when it comes to refunds.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoNo confusion on my end, I just addressed the problem at hand of why it happens if not for your benefit, then for everyone else's., I have no real experience in that department so my I'd be providing a less intelligent answer ...and you've already been given two different responsss to that end.
Edited to add: EBay will not help you, as they will blame the seller and EBay has no responsibility or liability for this. I have a HUNCH that the state will direct you to the merchant as the state will be very hands off about it and go off how the item was described. Who is the state to contradict the details provided by the merchant who advertised and sold the item. Per those details, the items are taxable.
My opinion is you're not getting that back. But then again, that's my ill-informed opinion. Only way I know how to get that back is to return for refund.
I've never tried to do what you're attempting. I can identify ahead of time potential sales tax issues and since I buy for resale, I just work the sales tax into my margin and buy at a lower price point to accomodate. If I know the seller well, I have them cancel and re-list correctly to avoid unnecessary tax... but again I only do that with sellers I have a great rapport with and who are willing to trust me & do the little extra work.
rickyk01
·2 years agoI’m having the same is issue and all I can say is you are ill informed. If you don’t know, shut up.
lacemaker3
·2 years ago@ajs_coins_and_alchemy,
A lot of your points can be summed up as being due to the extreme complexity of the laws for sales tax exemption on coins/legal tender/bullion in some states, and the vast differences between all the states on this subject.
One that I have come across that I don't think you mentioned: in some states, "legal tender" is exempt from sales tax only if it is sold at face value, or if the item is a fine metal, at the exchange value. Determining that is so complex that it is ludicrous to expect that to be enforced. Sure, a coin dealer could do it, but expecting an online marketplace that doesn't specialize in coins to do it is ridiculous. I could develop a computer algorithm that could do it, but expecting eBay programmers to do that when they can't get the mistakes out of their own product catalog is also ridiculous.
The states need to come to their senses and come up with an agreement on a reasonable and enforceable criteria for determining taxability or exempt status. If just one state could come up with reasonable and enforceable criteria, that would be a start, but I don't think any of them have achieved that yet.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoHonestly, I don't know that I agree with your first comment. I don't believe a lot of the states have extremely complex sales tax laws. Yes, there are some that are overly complex as you go on to explain... however, a lot of the state tax laws are summed up as "all coins & currency & bullion are exempt" with little in the way of qualifiers.
Illinois is one of those states. Illinois pretty much exempts everything. HOWEVER.... eBay makes it challenging to prove that your item qualifies under the given state law.... Sure, you can't fix 100% of the problems, but a VAST MAJORITY of the problems would be solved if eBay included a fillable field for "Is this legal tender" (yes, no). That literally could likely solve most of the problems, and then you just put band-aids on all the other little things to fix them and plug all the holes.
Legal tender being sold at face value and precious metal being sold at the exchange rate is no longer numismatic. So for the bullion, that's saying any non-numismatic bullion (a silver eagle would be numismatic, a plain silver bar would likely not be) is state tax exempt .... legal tender being sold at face value is basically going to your bank or grocery store and asking for change.
Random story comes to mind, point of the story is at the end... when I was a teenager I was the manager of a pool and we needed change for our cashiers ... it was a Sunday so the banks were closed so I had to run to the grocery store to exchange some larger bills for smaller denominations and coins. I called ahead first and the person on the other end kept saying something like "So you would like to BUY change". I was shocked, thinking they would charge me a fee for the exchange. I got there, they didn't charge me a fee, and I went on my merry way.
Looking back at it, right or wrong, I associate that experience with the state sales tax laws that discuss legal tender sold at face value. It basically is saying "you can sell someone change, or exchange money at face value, sans sales tax." I don't believe it's a complex law, I think it's a simple law written in a strange way to describe a common experience we take for granted every day....
lacemaker3
·2 years ago@ajs_coins_and_alchemy,
OK, you have more experience than I with this, so I will not disagree with you. Maybe there are already some states that have reasonable, and enforceable laws. But apparently, eBay can't implement those laws even for the states that are being reasonable.
It's strange that you should use Illinois as a good example ... the state that messed up their initial Marketplace Facilitator tax law so badly, that they literally required to eBay to collect the use tax (i.e. sales tax), but did not exempt sellers based in Illinois from also collecting it. The first year 2020, Illinois accepted the use tax that eBay was collecting and remitting, and at the end of the year informed all the sellers based in their state that they were also responsible for remitting it, without having been able to collect any of it. What a mess that was.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/Illinois-purchases-tax-rate-for-2021/m-p/31593907#M338145
I believe that they eventually refunded sellers who had been required to pay the extra use tax, and/or pardoned the sellers who had not remitted it. And rushed through an update to the law to correct their mistake for the next year.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
·2 years agoI use Illinois because that's where I live 🙂
I've made something like $80k in coin purchases on eBay in the last ~18 months (for resale), and my only issues have been items listed outside the Coins Category (understandable) or listed in the Commemoratives Category. US Mint issued Commemorative Coins are Legal Tender, and therefore qualify under many state laws, and that is very simple. However eBay's lack of a way to simply identify legal tender makes it overly complex to figure out what boxes need to be checked in order to qualify the item for tax exemption, and that is where you start jumping through hoops.
So I will say either eBay needs to create an Item Spec for Legal Tender, or they need to educate or provide resources for coin sellers to know how to properly list their items to meet the specs for exemptions. I've tried and tried and tried to understand it, I can't yet definitely identify what boxes need to specifically be checked to do this. I know it exists and occurs but I'm yet to identify specifically which functions accomplish it and which are irrelevant.
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Hey, I didn't say Illinois was a great state 😉 we are corrupt as heck, and don't know our heads from our rears ... do you know how many of our former politicians are or were in prison? Blagoevich our ex-gov! We also can't figure out how to make our government function in the most basic ways ... I'm just thankful they have ONE great and very robust sales tax exemption for coins/bullion.
I don't have a resale license for tax exemption or whatever that thing is. I suppose I could get one to solve my Commem Coin tax issue, since eBay can't figure it out very well or help their sellers figure it out, but I personally run into the issue of paying that tax fairly infrequently, so it is worth it to me to suck it up and just pay that (illegal) tax when it occurs, rather than go through the paperwork process of getting a resale license to exempt taxes.
A lot of sellers (knowingly/unknowingly or intentionally/unintentionally) list commemorative coins outside the commemorative category, they list them under Coin Collections or Proof Sets --- that right there makes the entire point moot. Same coins, listed under a different (but perfectly applicable/appropriate/legal) sub-category, eliminates the tax liability in the relevant states...
monroe67
·2 years ago"I purchased several items that are state tax exempt but was charged anyway.
. . . . . . .
I have over eight purchases . . . .
What can I do to get my money back?"
You were charged sales tax incorrectly on more than eight purchases? All at once or over several days or longer?
What did you buy?
What eBay category were those items listed in?
A lot of times, the eBay category is where the "problem" arises.
jsam1776
OP2 years agoThe eight purchases were over about two weeks. I purchased old U.S. coins which are tax exempt in Florida. Why the tax is charged is not as important as how do I get the money back. Though I feel 60 days is a very long time to have to wait for a refund, I am now having to wait 120 days and even then there is no promise of a refund even then.
What can I do to get my refund?
bonjourami
·2 years agoWhy are the items tax exempt? What state do you live in?
jsam1776
OP2 years agoFlorida. U.S. Coinage is tax exempt. I purchased old coins.