Jack... I agree with you...
it is really sad that eBay is throwing their weight around. I think they should not be able to charge us (the seller fee.. except on the selling price of the item) and not on the combination of the item selling price and tax they collected on the transaction. The tax should be a one time charge collected at the state, county or federal level and sent to the states comptroller or the Federal Government. The sellers fee should only be targeting the items (selling price) and not charged on the total transaction.
(selling price + the tax collected) x (seller fee percentage) - the current method / kind of unethical (my option)
the fair method in my opinion is two separate lines
item selling price x seller fee = fee collected from seller (that is fare ebay has to make money..)
item selling price x state, county or federal tax = tax collected - (turned over to the state comptroller or federal government)
I think maybe the tax they are collecting is a federal tax at a set rate (same for all online transactions regardless of the state the purchase originated in )
I have not looked in to this so I'm not sure the facts...
On our company website we only collect tax in Texas as we are in Texas and we collect at the county rate of our business location we sell throughout the US but we don't sell over $100,000 in any one state so we don't collect state tax outside of Texas... (When I first caught what they (eBay was doing) my thought was how do I know the tax rate being collected as you have no way to predict the future location of the sale) so my profit spreadsheets were gone to be off.. so they charge a set federal rate. I can't remember what I calculated at the time.. so it might be that eBay being so large has a set federal rate that over rides the local state laws and there must be a loop hole that lets them calculated the tax and the seller fee together.. and they don't distribute to the states but to the federal government and then the fed's maybe give it back to the state.. ? (kind of off the subject) Like I said I'm to busy to go reading on all this .. but I still feel eBay should not charge us a seller fee on the amount of tax that is collected. To me that is kind of dirty.. like I said it must be legal for them but a good company with ethical principles really should help their seller's out and not just nickel and dime them because they can. Its that word called "Greed" unfortunately I don't really believe we have any way to challenge it other than selling on a competitors site. I just wanted you to know your not alone on how you feel about the topic.
eBay has found another way to put a little more change in their pocket and a loop hole I'm guessing. If it was not legal I would find it hard to believe they would do it as a class action suite would cost them millions.
