mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
It isn't a "scam".
Ebay found another way to process sales tax from what they were doing originally. They needed to. The original way was causing a great deal of confusion for buyers and they were getting lots of complaints. They were also getting complaints from the various financial institutions and credit card companies involved due to all the small transactions. So Ebay had to make a change.
I'm with everyone on this. I don't like the additional PP fees involved in this. I'm fortunate, for me it is a cost I can absorb. I know for others, especially of high end items this is more problematic. I respect that completely.
How would you suggest Ebay go about collecting the sales tax? Knowing that all the little micro payments that were happening by the way Ebay started collecting the sales tax is not going to work. So what other alternatives are there for Ebay?
@tottie7777 wrote:Not true.
They just collected from a single sale of $100 from me to Nebraska. THEY ARE NOT even collecting for them and will not be required to collect or pay that tax they collected. https://revenue.nebraska.gov/businesses/sales-and-use-tax/notice-remote-sellers-and-marketplace-faci... my total for 10 years here selling to NE is 100 dollars!
The Nebraska Legislature recently enacted LB 284, clarifying that remote sellers (those without a physical presence) selling tangible property and services subject to Nebraska sales tax must obtain a sales tax permit from the Nebraska Department of Revenue (DOR) and begin collecting and remitting Nebraska and local sales tax if their retail sales (all sales other than resale), including sales made through a Multivendor Marketplace Platform (MMP), in Nebraska exceeded $100,000 in the previous year or current calendar year, or if the seller made 200 or more separate Nebraska retail sales transactions in the prior calendar year or current calendar year.
You just simply misunderstand. Ebay has been responsible since May 1st of 2019.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/taxes-import-charges?id=4121#section4
@tottie7777 wrote:You are incorrect. Ebay was not "forced" into anything of the like. Most sellers never reach the thresholds of those states looking to correct. If Ebay collects and the sellers does not reach the threshold they will just keep that money AND paypal will charge a 3 percent transaction fee ON THE TAX never paid to anyone.
For instance, today they charged a sale of mine ($100 item) sales tax for Nebraska and no tax is warranted and no law forcing Ebay to collect tax on a yearly sales of 100 bucks to Nebraska. https://revenue.nebraska.gov/businesses/sales-and-use-tax/notice-remote-sellers-and-marketplace-faci...
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We all pretty much call this a Sales Tax issue, but in reality is is a Use Tax when you purchase from out of state or out of country and bring it into your state.
The definition is: Use tax is a sales tax on purchases made outside one's state of residence for taxable items that will be used, stored or consumed in one's state of residence and on which no tax was collected in the state of purchase.
Most states that have a sales tax also have a law regarding Use Tax on the books. The problem is they never found a way to enforce it and most residence were not voluntarily complying. So last year with the Supreme Court overturned some older rulings that prevented taxation of internet sales, states were very excited.
Now these states also have minimum thresholds that a seller need to sell to people within any given state before sales tax / use tax is required. This presented a big problem for states as they knew that a whole lot of potential income for them was being left on the table by the volume of small sellers on various Marketplaces like Ebay.
So the states came up the Marketplace Facilitator Laws [MFLs] that put the onus onto the Marketplace as a whole instead of the individual sellers within the Marketplace. This guaranteed that all sales on the site would qualify for taxation when shipped into a state with an MFL.
