Shipping Fees

[terme1822_egbpxvgek]

I am new to selling on EBay.. I thought I had read thru all the material and understood all the fees.  But when I sell an item the fees don’t make sense to me. For example. When I sell, typically the buyer pays for shipping. When the item sells, I print the label supplied by EBay. They charge me since I printed the label. Yet they also charge the buyer and doesn’t send me the shipping fees. Thereby paying for shipping twice. I also get charged by EBay on final cost including the shipping charge from the buyer that should go to me. I’m confused. 

[dq3141]

They DO send you the shipping fee paid by the buyer, after taking their Final Value Fee. And that's what you use to pay for postage.

[klhmdg]

You need to go back and reread about selling and fees and shipping.

FVF is taken from the total of item price+tax+shipping.  and an extra .30 for processing.

After the FVF is taken the balance is sent to you.

You use this to purchase the shipping label and send the item to the buyer.

[kosmosattik]

Example:

$40 item + $10 shipping + $5 sales tax = buyer payment of $55

eBay's fee is (12.55% of $55) + 0.30 = $7.20

$10.00 is passed through to the shipper

$5 is passed through to the taxing state

$55 - $7.20 - $10 - $5 = $32.80 net to you

If that still does not add up, check the Payments tab in Seller Hub.  There may be pending payments that have not hit your bank account yet.  Or there may have been an eBay disbursement in the last two days but it has not been posted to your bank account yet.

eBay is annoying in not providing a single screen where all the $ components of a transaction are accounted for--it takes two screen to see all the components.  Poke around under the Payments tab and should be able to find them.

[jayjaspersgarage]

I looked at your listings and you seem to have the cost of shipping covered.  I pay for labels through my PayPal account.  I think a majority of sellers choose to pay for labels through available funds.  I have serval businesses unrelated to ebay so everything goes through PayPal to keep my accountant happy.

Whether you offer the bogus 'free' shipping or keep it separate as you have the customer ultimately is paying for the postage.  

You have nice photos and seem to be set up for a great start here.

Be sure to start a file for receipts immediately since you are going to include your on-line sales in your income tax filing next year, right?  Dedicate a space in your home exclusively for ebay and figure out the percentage of your homes square footage that space amounts to.  I calculate cubic footage because I have high ceilings and use an office with the highest ceiling possible.  Then track your utilities that serve that particular room, especially heat and a/c if you have it.  The deductions as cost of doing business add up quickly.  All the gas I burn driving to estate sales and the post offices in my area are deductible.  I even wrote off 50% of a trip to Boston a few years ago because I held two on-line sales discussion panels at the hotel I stayed at between estate sale trips up in Maine and New Hampshire.

Consult an accountant before you get too creative with deductions.

Good luck!

[kosmosattik]

@jayjaspersgarages

"All the gas I burn driving to estate sales and the post offices in my area are deductible."

Why don't you use the mileage deduction, 58.5 cents per mile for 2021?  That's intended to capture pro rata  costs of vehicle usage in addition to gas--depreciation, insurance, maintenance.  For example, in a 25 mpg vehicle with a gas cost of $3.50 the gas-only deduction is 14 cents.  A log needs to be kept with the details of each trip.  googling can provide templates of such logs.    

[jayjaspersgarage]

"Why don't you use the mileage deduction, 58.5 cents per mile for 2021? "

I give my accountant the information required for each vehicle and each business.  They handle the rest.

[luckythewinner]

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@terme1822_egbpxvgek wrote:

They charge me since I printed the label. Yet they also charge the buyer and doesn’t send me the shipping fees. Thereby paying for shipping twice. 

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The buyer pays price + shipping + sales tax. 

eBay charges you  fees based on price + shipping + sales tax. 

eBay credits your account with price + shipping - fees. 

When you print a label and pay with available funds, eBay debit your account for the label cost. 

The payout will be  price + shipping - fees - label (unless you owe eBay for other activity). 

You are not charged twice. You must be misreading the numbers.

[kosmosattik]

@jayjaspersgarage 

Well, if all you give your accountant is gas receipts with a % business usage you'd be leaving money on the table.  You should ask him about the mileage deduction.  Now, if these are corporately owned vehicles that are also used personally that's a different kettle of fish.

Surely only a very small minority of sellers use a corporately owned vehicle for eBay business.  They should surely use the mileage deduction if the mileage is at all substantial to justify the time.  A habit of record keeping needs to be established.  A spreadsheet app on a phone that can be ported to a device where it can be printed would be one way to do it.  Or old school--a paper log book followed by running a calculator tape at year end.  A ten mile round trip to the post office is worth a $5.85 deduction that costs only a minute or two of time to record.

[jayjaspersgarage]

"Well, if all you give your accountant is gas receipts with a % business usage you'd be leaving money on the table. "

I have filed taxes since 1975.  Believe me when I say you are not informing me of anything I don't already know about.  Hopefully some other less experienced people selling on-line will benefit from this thread.  Of course I use the standard mileage deduction as often as possible.  

[buyselljack2016]

I want to use that standard mileage deduction, but as I often also stop at the grocery store to make purchases when I go sourcing inventory, and when dropping packages at the Post Office, I guess that negates most of, or all of that mileage.