mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
What you were told is correct. It is an improvement for the buyers. Unfortunately the improvement for them is a price increase for sellers as we now pay payment processing fees on the sales tax portion of their payment. Before this, we did not have to pay any additional fee on the sales tax when Ebay collected and remitted it.
@tuffrings wrote:
I logged on to the forums for the first time in 5 years to check on this. Exactly what I am seeing too.
Possible class action suit they are asking for here.
Unfortunately, (you are going to hate me for saying this) it really is the industry standard. I worked in retail for 30 years - managed stores - and yes, we paid the processing fee on the ENTIRE amount of the transaction - taxes included.
Based on what happens on the B&M side of retail, it would be doubtful that a class action suit would ever get off the ground...
...Sorry...
I think the reason why they (eBay) did this is because the three or so weeks prior to this (when it was a separate charge), there were probably a lot of buyers wondering what were all these little charges coming up on their statements from? I too was wondering...I called my bank and asked where these charges were coming from and they said PayPal...because I am here on the boards, I just put two & two together.
Ebay/PayPal probably integrated the sales tax with the item it is associated with to avoid/stop the confusion for the buyer...and you all know how it goes...eBay is always going to make things easier and more understandable for the buyer.
I hope that the seller's statements will have the sales tax separated from the sales for the end of year income taxes (for the sellers)...probably not...it is yet another inconvenience for the seller. 
@johnrj1226 wrote:Guess that extra small fee is well worth paying vs. having to keep up with the ST yourself as an on line seller - Here is the math on a dollar transaction > X (total payment received for item) times .05 (ex. state sales tax %) = sales tax amount or 5 cents or .05 times .029 (added pay pal fee %) = .145 cents on each dollar received
Well yes and no. Most small sellers would never even qualify to collect sales tax in other states other than our own due to the sales thresholds for those states. But for the larger sellers that would qualify in some or all the other states then yes.
@hurryagain wrote:
I think the reason why they (eBay) did this is because the three or so weeks prior to this (when it was a separate charge), there were probably a lot of buyers wondering what were all these little charges coming up on their statements from? I too was wondering...I called my bank and asked where these charges were coming from and they said PayPal...because I am here on the boards, I just put two & two together.
Ebay/PayPal probably integrated the sales tax with the item it is associated with to avoid/stop the confusion for the buyer...and you all know how it goes...eBay is always going to make things easier and more understandable for the buyer.
I hope that the seller's statements will have the sales tax separated from the sales for the end of year income taxes (for the sellers)...probably not...it is yet another inconvenience for the seller.
It wasn't just a few weeks prior to the change. Ebay has been collecting sales tax for sales in certain states since January of this year. So the old way they were doing it was for the previous 10 months. And yes I would venture a guess that many buyers complained it was confusing for them to get multiple transaction on the same purchase. So I do understand why Ebay made the change.
It is just I don't think they gave consideration to that it would cost sellers actual money when they made the change. And if they did but just didn't feel it was important, that is a whole separate issue.
That is one thing about PP, they have some good reports. Download them and arrange them as you need. I tested this today and the sales tax is split out and the gross amount does include the sales tax. So it will be included in the 1099's PP issues as part of our gross sales.
Sellers will need to take that into consideration when they work their magic on the PP reports to come of with their actual net income. Meaning they have to take the sales tax into consideration as an expense.
But that is no different than sellers having to reduce the gross by refunds, fees, shipping costs and all the other things we need to take into consideration.
@pink.fish.rule wrote:
There were some complaints about the separate charges but tbh I think it was more likely that ebay saw a way to offload the processing cost onto the sellers.
Do we know if Ebay had a processing cost?
@mam98031 wrote:
@hurryagain wrote:
I think the reason why they (eBay) did this is because the three or so weeks prior to this (when it was a separate charge), there were probably a lot of buyers wondering what were all these little charges coming up on their statements from? I too was wondering...I called my bank and asked where these charges were coming from and they said PayPal...because I am here on the boards, I just put two & two together.
Ebay/PayPal probably integrated the sales tax with the item it is associated with to avoid/stop the confusion for the buyer...and you all know how it goes...eBay is always going to make things easier and more understandable for the buyer.
I hope that the seller's statements will have the sales tax separated from the sales for the end of year income taxes (for the sellers)...probably not...it is yet another inconvenience for the seller.
It wasn't just a few weeks prior to the change. Ebay has been collecting sales tax for sales in certain states since January of this year. So the old way they were doing it was for the previous 10 months. And yes I would venture a guess that many buyers complained it was confusing for them to get multiple transaction on the same purchase. So I do understand why Ebay made the change.
It is just I don't think they gave consideration to that it would cost sellers actual money when they made the change. And if they did but just didn't feel it was important, that is a whole separate issue.
That is one thing about PP, they have some good reports. Download them and arrange them as you need. I tested this today and the sales tax is split out and the gross amount does include the sales tax. So it will be included in the 1099's PP issues as part of our gross sales.
Sellers will need to take that into consideration when they work their magic on the PP reports to come of with their actual net income. Meaning they have to take the sales tax into consideration as an expense.
But that is no different than sellers having to reduce the gross by refunds, fees, shipping costs and all the other things we need to take into consideration.
No - it isn't going to be deducted as an 'expense', it will need to be calculated and deducted from gross INCOME. There IS a difference.
