Final Value fee calculated on total that includes sales tax collected

[cukettleshop]

Why did eBay feel the need to assess final value fee on top of the sales tax? Other than the obvious reason!

Ebay, or should I say feebay, is extracting every last penny from their selling community, to the point that the small sales are not economical. This is also in addition to the shipping fee they assess for using their service. I know this has been going on for a while, but it is getting expensive. What options does eBay provide to minimize these fees?

[eburtonlab]

eBay decided in advance how much revenue was needed, then what amount the percentage would apply to, and then set the percentage so that the needed revenue would be the ultimate result.

Alternatively, eBay could have applied a higher percentage to the amount minus sales tax to get the same overall revenue.

It is not clear why you would apparently prefer a higher percentage rate applied to a slightly smaller amount if the total fee amount you paid was the same.

The seller's final value fee has applied to the shipping amount since 2011 -- primarily to avoid incentivizing the seller to play games with the shipping amount to avoid paying fees.

[woodland_gnome]

eBay acts as both a selling venue and a payment collection, and sellers pay fees for both functions. Back when PayPal handled most payment processing it based its fee on the total amount collected from the buyer, as do all payment processors that I am aware of, but eBay based it's "Final Value Fees" on only the price plus shipping fees the buyer paid (years ago it was only on the price but too many sellers evaded the fees by inflating the s/h while deflating the price). When eBay took over both functions it combined both fees into a single fee (which confusingly they continued to call "Final Value Fees") and decided the single fee would be based on the total payment but reduced the rate to lower than the prior total of the two rates.