eBay

mam98031 · ‎01-11-2019

I understand that Ebay is now considered a Facilitator in a few states and due to recent tax law changes, Ebay must charge, collect and remit sales tax on what sellers sell on this site to certain states that require it. I get all of that.

I live in one of those states. But what I don't understand is why sales tax was charged to me on something I purchased from a seller in China. I wasn't aware that the tax laws of a state could affect a seller located in a different country.

Or is it just my misunderstanding and the states do have the right to charge sales tax on sales from an international seller? What the heck am I misunderstanding.

I just have a desire to understand.

mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999

cr-8076 · ‎01-11-2019

"Once eBay starts to collect tax in the above states, no action is required on your part, and there will be no charges or fees for eBay automatically calculating, collecting and remitting sales tax. The collection process will apply to all sales, whether the seller is located in or outside of the United States."

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cr-8076 · ‎01-11-2019

"Once eBay starts to collect tax in the above states, no action is required on your part, and there will be no charges or fees for eBay automatically calculating, collecting and remitting sales tax. The collection process will apply to all sales, whether the seller is located in or outside of the United States."

mam98031 · ‎01-11-2019

Thank you for the information. Obviously I overlooked that statement. Was that in the Announcement?

mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999

cr-8076 · ‎01-11-2019

Apologies, it's this page:

https://ebay.com/help/ebay/really/sucks?id=4121#section4

eleanor*rigby · ‎01-11-2019

Interesting url on that link. Not sure I'd click on it, or trust anything displayed on the page.

berserkerplanet · ‎01-11-2019

>>Not sure I'd click on it, or trust anything displayed on the page.

Why?

The domain is ebay.com There is no way for anything malicious to occur unless eBay webservers have been compromised, malicious parties have somehow managed a DNS hijacking, there is a man in the middle situation in play, or the users computer has an infestation.

The link is actually quite clever and leverages a stupid feature of or bug in eBay's help system. Starting from the end:

The #section4 part is an anchor that jumps down to the relevant section of the document (that part of the page is an element that has an ID attribute that is equal to 'section4'

id=4121 is a parameter that tells the help engine what document is being requested (in this case it's the 'Taxes and Import Charges' help page.)

The clever part is the /really/sucks part of the URL. It turn out that pretty much anything can be substituted for those two words and things still work. I'm guessing that has to be due to a server misconfiguration of some sort (maybe some sort of wildcarding that I don't understand - but I'm not a server guy).

What I'm really curious about is why cr-8076 knows about it 🙂

Anyway, other than throwing up possible red flags that a server might be compromised by the oddness or seeming out of place (really/sucks seem odd for being eBay subdirectories), nothing after the domain matters in terms of determining validity. I will grant you that that /really/sucks part of the URL made me pause for a minute, but only a moment before I fired up HTTPfox and traced the (totally innocuous) load of that URL.

If the root domain is ebay.com then there is no way for that link to go anywhere other than an eBay server unless the external forces I mentioned above (compromised server, DNS, MITM, local malware) are at work.

city*satins · ‎01-11-2019

Perhaps an eBay programmer was having a bit of puckish fun on his or her last day on the job.

THIS SPACE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK

berserkerplanet · ‎01-11-2019

Maybe, but if you'll note I said you can replace really/sucks with anything and it still works as long as the overall path structure remains the same.

https://ebay.com/help/ebay/foo/bar?id=4121#section4
or
https://ebay.com/help/ebay/1/2?id=4121#section4
or
https://ebay.com/help/ebay/*/*?id=4121#section4
work just the same.

That could be the mechanism hypothetical disgruntled programmer (HDP) chose to allow his joke to be possible and still allow correct pages to load, but that doesn't make sense. Nobody would ever see his joke as links that looked like
https://ebay.com/help/ebay/really/sucks?id=4121#section4 wouldn't be published anywhere. Maybe a parlor trick to show his buddies at the pub on his iPhone? Nah. Not impressive.

I think it's a server configuration bug.

7606dennis · ‎01-12-2019

Actually, it isn't the seller in the foreign country that is being affected. It is the buyer that is being taxed. I believe that many of the states that have passed laws requiring "Facilitators" to collect sales tax are the those that have already had USE TAX statutes in place so the buyer in that state was already liable for paying tax on their purchases made outside and delivered within the state.

"It is an intelligent man that is aware of his own ignorance."

airsheep · ‎01-12-2019

I don't mind paying sales tax if required; it was threatened for a long time. My concern is that if sales tax is due, that it gets to the appropriate agency and not become an additional source of revenue for unscrupulous sellers. I've seen a few sellers collecting 25% or more 'sales tax', and you can bet it's not going to the government (needless to say, my finger hit the back button with a quickness)!

Coffee is my friend.

T&S Tool #10mm ratchet

mam98031 · ‎01-12-2019

@airsheep wrote:
I don't mind paying sales tax if required; it was threatened for a long time. My concern is that if sales tax is due, that it gets to the appropriate agency and not become an additional source of revenue for unscrupulous sellers. I've seen a few sellers collecting 25% or more 'sales tax', and you can bet it's not going to the government (needless to say, my finger hit the back button with a quickness)!

Ebay is charging the sales tax to buyer in the states that require it. Ebay collects and remits the sales tax to the appropriate states.

Seller that are actually in the state that sales tax is due is still responsible to collect and remit the appropriate sales tax.

Ebay is collecting sales tax for sellers that do NOT reside or operate their business in the particular state that has tax due.

mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999

lacemaker3 · ‎01-12-2019

@7606dennis wrote:
Actually, it isn't the seller in the foreign country that is being affected. It is the buyer that is being taxed. I believe that many of the states that have passed laws requiring "Facilitators" to collect sales tax are the those that have already had USE TAX statutes in place so the buyer in that state was already liable for paying tax on their purchases made outside and delivered within the state.

ALL states that have sales tax, also have Use Tax laws in place.

Some states have been more effective than other states at collecting their use tax though. Washington for example had unusually (and unnecessarily) complex requirements and reporting process, and it appears that many residents of Washington were completely unaware of the use tax and did not comply with it.

Some other states collect the use tax on the same form as the state income tax. This method probably gets better compliance, since it would generally be required to enter something on that line on the form. In Michigan, residents can either pay use tax on a default amount of $1,000 (which is $60 in use tax) or they can calculate exactly how much they bought in untaxed transactions and pay the exact amount of use tax they owe. Although they are supposed to pay the exact amount if their purchases are more than $1,000. This method probably has a much higher compliance rate.

lacemaker3 · ‎01-12-2019

@mam98031 wrote:
@airsheep wrote:
I don't mind paying sales tax if required; it was threatened for a long time. My concern is that if sales tax is due, that it gets to the appropriate agency and not become an additional source of revenue for unscrupulous sellers. I've seen a few sellers collecting 25% or more 'sales tax', and you can bet it's not going to the government (needless to say, my finger hit the back button with a quickness)!
...
Seller that are actually in the state that sales tax is due is still responsible to collect and remit the appropriate sales tax.
...

I don't believe this is correct. From what I have seen, eBay is collecting sales tax for all sellers on purchases being delivered to Washington, no matter where the seller is located. If the seller is located in Washington, then eBay sales tax collection over-rides the seller's tax table for Washington purchases.

The situation is a bit more complex for Minnesota due to the small-business exemption that applies to the marketplace sales tax law there. However, if a seller is located in Minnesota, then eBay collects the sales tax due for purchases in Minnesota just like Washington.

That's what it says in the policy:

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/taxes-import-charges?id=4121#section4
...
Once eBay starts to collect tax in the above states, no action is required on your part, and there will be no charges or fees for eBay automatically calculating, collecting and remitting sales tax. The collection process will apply to all sales, whether the seller is located in or outside of the United States.
When a buyer purchases an item on eBay, and the ship to address is one of the above states, eBay will calculate and add the applicable sales tax at checkout. The buyer will pay both the cost of the item along with the sales tax. eBay will collect and remit the tax.
...