Why do Final Value Fees include Sales tax?!?!?

[mlsiler]

I find it incredibly unfair and would go so far as to doubt it is even legal to collect additional fees for FVF on the sales tax that is charged to the BUYER and yet we get hit with approximately 13.25% fees for the taxes. WWTAF?!?!! And yes you may say it's just a few bucks but it adds up and I am betting eBay makes tens of millions of dollars in these fees every year, year after year. We as the consumer of their product feel at the mercy of fleabay and shrug off the extra $3, $5 or $10 but should we? and do we have to? Or can we gather and start a class action suit?

[dryophelia]

@mlsiler 

Here are 4000 conversations about this topic. 
Dive in!

[theteamsetguy · Accepted solution]

@mlsiler ,

Next time you go out to eat with your family at your favorite restaurant and with tip and sales taxes of $50.00 on a $250.00 bill. The owner has to pay up 4% of the total sale including taxes and tip to Visa, MC, Amex, or Discover. Ask the owner if he thinks it s fair. 

Instead of complaining about something that you can’t control you should be like the restaurant owner and pass those costs on to the buyer.

In most states the owner can’t deduct the 4% from the servers wages.

[traditonalproducts]

At least....

[luckythewinner]

Why do Final Value Fees include Sales tax?

Because that is how eBay decided to calculate their fees.

I find it incredibly unfair and would go so far as to doubt it is even legal to collect additional fees for FVF on the sales tax

Thousands of people have posted here about this, and so far no one has been able to cite a law that eBay broke.Perhaps you will be the exception.

I am betting eBay makes tens of millions of dollars in these fees every year

eBay is a for-profit company.

Or can we gather and start a class action suit?

IMHO no law firm would agree to help you file a class action suit just because you don't like the price of eBay's service.

[kensgiftshop]

Yes it legal.

Pay Pal, credit cards and other payment processors have been doing it for years.

I guess you can join all the others that said they were going to start a class action suit.

Come back and let us know how it goes because we haven't heard anything from any of them about it.

[dbfolks166mt]

     Just when I though we might get through a week without seeing this post come up I have been proven wrong again. There are literally 100's if not 1,000's of postings on this forum that have asked the same question and tried to make the same points. The answers have not changed. This has become my canned answer to these types of postings. 

    I have always considered the eBay FVF's on sales tax to be the best accounting bargain around. If you sell a $100 item to a buyer in a state with 8% sales tax the FVF on the $8.00 in sales tax amounts to 13.25% * $8.00 or $1.08 if you are promoting at 2% that adds another $.16 so the total FVF on the sales tax is $1.24. 

     For that $1.24 eBay keeps track of the 10,000 various state, county, city, parish, municipality..... sales tax rates, and laws, and applies and collects the proper sales tax from the buyer. The sales tax percentage may also vary depending on the type of items you are selling since some states, counties, cities…. Tax different items differently. Food and clothing for example. EBay then remit those collected funds to the 45 states with sales tax laws on whatever periodic basis is required. There is NO WAY I want to take on that burden as a seller for $1.24 +/- out of a $100 sale. "

[monica-sells]

The class action suit is not new...

but the WWTAF means what?

(with a unique combination if exclamatory punctuations)....bravo

[slippinjimmy]

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@monica-sells wrote:

The class action suit is not new...

but the WWTAF means what?

(with a unique combination if exclamatory punctuations)....bravo

---

Maybe an extra W for impact? WTAF is a more common acronym, while **bleep** is the most common.

[monroe67]

"I find it incredibly unfair and would go so far as to doubt it is even legal to collect additional fees for FVF on the sales tax that is charged to the BUYER and yet we get hit with approximately 13.25% fees for the taxes. WWTAF?!?!! And yes you may say it's just a few bucks but it adds up and I am betting eBay makes tens of millions of dollars in these fees every year, year after year." 

It sure seems like -- in most of the 4,000 other threads started about eBay's fees on sales tax -- every time somebody "doubt[s] it is even legal" for eBay to collect fees, there are at least two or three requests that the OP quote the law that eBay is breaking.  

Nobody has been able to do so, although some have tried.  At least a year ago, someone even cited the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:  "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."  The Sixteenth Amendment was ratified February 3, 1913.  It established the American income tax.  To think it prohibits the fee structure of a corporation that could not have even been imagined in 1913 is absurd.    

I am still waiting to read a cite to a law that applies to a theory that eBay is violating it when it collects fees.  

One other thing about fees:

eBay collects fees from sellers.  Smart sellers set their prices so that the buyers pay the fees.  

[soh.maryl]

If you take a moment to give this a little bit of thought, don't you imagine eBay has a few (hundred) attorneys on staff who've determined that this is indeed totally legal?   

[monica-sells]

I see a more glaring problem..

How can you possibly ship that beautiful high-end camera for $10.00 (shipping charged according to listing)?

It had to cost more than that, just for the signature confirmation......

which means you had to cut into your profit to pay for shipping above what you charged the customer...

which makes the costs look worse than they really are......

the difference that you paid to ship would have covered the "added expense" of the FVF on the sales tax....

at least pay for the shipping out of your funds (processing) .....since they will likely hold the payout for 30 days (but that's for another thread)

[slippinjimmy]

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@mlsiler wrote:

I find it incredibly unfair and would go so far as to doubt it is even legal to collect additional fees for FVF on the sales tax that is charged to the BUYER and yet we get hit with approximately 13.25% fees for the taxes. WWTAF?!?!! And yes you may say it's just a few bucks but it adds up and I am betting eBay makes tens of millions of dollars in these fees every year, year after year. We as the consumer of their product feel at the mercy of fleabay and shrug off the extra $3, $5 or $10 but should we? and do we have to? Or can we gather and start a class action suit?

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I don't "shrug off" the impact of fees on Sales Tax.

I DO understand that eBay could simply go back to the old "no fees on taxes" policy and replace it with a 1 - 1.5% increase in the standard FVF.

[chapeau-noir]

It's Groundhog Day all over again.

[hartungcards]

That's redundant.