State sales tax question.

[inhawaii]

Why does the amount ebay takes out for sales tax in my own state (Hawaii) differ from what the actual state sales tax is?

Hawaii sales tax: 4%

Amount taken out by ebay: More than 4%.

[mega-ma-roo]

The sales tax is at the rate of the buyer's shipping address, not the seller's.

[inhawaii]

Sorry, i should have made that clear.  I am talking about buyers from my own state. 

[fab_finds4u]

Hawaii has a general excise tax of 4%. On top of the state tax there may be one or more local taxes and one or more special district taxes. Each of these taxes is up to .5 %. And shipping is taxed.

[bigdeals.etc]

Yea as mentioned above, I doubt the cumulative sales tax is that simple throughout Hawaii.

Here in Calif, there’s many districts with different sales tax. I remember my CPA always had a headache when filing those for me because there’s no way in ebay to differentiate districts, only by state. So I always just ended up collecting an “average” and whenever I ended up under the actual amount I paid that out of pocket to the state.

So now ebay collects it, it’s much less headache because now they have the burden to deal with when it comes time to pay it to the state, not me.

[wus0003]

never ever charged tax to buyers before eBay started charging. 

[di2360]

I had a recent purchase that was more. I called Ebay and they said they would send it t the right department. Now it was only .10 cents, but it was wrong and I wanted it checked into.  They did and refunded me the overpayment of  the tax. 

[mam98031]

It does seem to have some areas of variation.

https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates/hawaii.html

[rosszonebricks]

Are you factoring in the whole transaction being taxable?  (cost of item plus shipping?)   So 80$ item with $20 shipping, the sales tax is based on the $100 instead of $80.

[soh.maryl]

You probably should read eBay's announcements about this.

There are now 42 (I believe) states that require eBay to charge state sales tax on items being delivered to those states.  There were some states that jumped on the bandwagon early in the game (mid 2018) and others that have come lately to the party.  In those announcements, there is a chart that shows which states started this and when it began for those states.  Make no mistake, this is not an eBay charge -- eBay is merely serving as the collector or facilitator according to the law in that state.  It's just like WalMart charging state sales tax on your purchases per the law in your state, or whatever state you're in when purchasing.  All sellers need to learn the rudimentary information about this because it's still new to some buyers and to many sellers also.