mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
You may have missed this email from Ebay. There was also another from PP. If you need the PP one, just ask.
As you may be aware, 11 new states have adopted Internet Sales Tax policies as of October 1, bringing the total to 34 states that now require the collection of sales tax. As the impact of this tax law becomes more apparent, PayPal and eBay are making changes that will make Internet Sales Tax collection less complex for buyers and for you.
Starting in November 2019, the way taxable transactions are processed and how taxes are collected for remittance will change, as follows:
- In states where eBay is required to collect Internet Sales Tax from buyers, order totals sent for processing will reflect the gross order amount inclusive of tax.
- Once settled, the tax amount will be automatically deducted for remittance to the applicable taxing authority.
- A record of the sales tax portion of the order will be available on the Seller Hub Order details page and through our Download order report.
Please note the applicable tax will continue to be paid by the buyer and you do not need to take any action.
We understand that the holiday selling season is nearly upon us and we are working to make this transition as smooth as possible.
Learn more about Internet Sales Tax in the eBay Seller Center. If you have questions about how Internet Sales Tax may affect you, we recommend consulting with your tax advisor, or our partners Avalara and TaxJar.
@rockusone wrote:This totally messes up my bookkeeping. Now I have to do the math to figure what the tax is and change my spreadsheet formulas. Either leave the tax out of the
Sales Totals or include it in Selling Costs. Does eBay even have a QA team? Or do you just use your sellers as the crash-test-dummies?
@rockusone - In Seller Hub you can select a group of orders and download a report that shows the tax amounts, either seller collected or eBay collected. It only goes back a maximum of 90 days, so it is limited if you need anything further back than that, but hopefully this will help you at least going forward.
Go to Manage Orders and select your date range, check the boxes next to the orders you want in the report or the checkbox at the top to select them all, and then click "download report".
You can then open that report in Excel and it has all the order info, including the tax amount and whether it was collected by seller or by eBay.
I know it's not perfect, but hopefully that will make the math a little easier to deal with.
@rockusone wrote:Thanks for the info, I don't check email very often, too many addresses and too much junk. lol!
It is not in your best interest to ignore emails from Ebay. Certainly many are not important or don't interest me, but when it is about changes to the site or policy issues, it just isn't a good plan to ignore them and then just come to the threads to complain about something you didn't know was happening because you didn't take the time to read the email. At some point you will miss something that is really important and could hurt the health of your selling account or cost you real money.
@readabouthorses wrote:I do have Open Office and that is what I opened the report in .. the spreadsheet in the OpenOffice Suite. It was a mess. I've opened up other reports from other sources in that program and they have always been fine. I probably just need to play with it a bit more ... I hate spreadsheets anyway ... I'd rather give birth to another baby than have to work with a spreadsheet program.
@readabouthorses - I know the feeling. I have a love/hate relationship with spreadsheets sometimes myself. They sure do come in handy sometimes but other times they make you want to throw the computer out the window. I don't want to derail this thread, but am happy to answer questions in a private message if there's anything I can do to try to help you make that file work. Not an expert by any means, but I've picked up a few tricks along the way. 
@autopiacarcare wrote:
@readabouthorses wrote:I do have Open Office and that is what I opened the report in .. the spreadsheet in the OpenOffice Suite. It was a mess. I've opened up other reports from other sources in that program and they have always been fine. I probably just need to play with it a bit more ... I hate spreadsheets anyway ... I'd rather give birth to another baby than have to work with a spreadsheet program.
@readabouthorses - I know the feeling. I have a love/hate relationship with spreadsheets sometimes myself. They sure do come in handy sometimes but other times they make you want to throw the computer out the window. I don't want to derail this thread, but am happy to answer questions in a private message if there's anything I can do to try to help you make that file work. Not an expert by any means, but I've picked up a few tricks along the way.
Thanks for the offer. I do have a friend who is a whiz at spreadsheets so I'm going to ask her to take a look at it and see what I am doing wrong. I don't need any of the info right now but as more and more states come into the mix at some point I think all of us sellers will be getting many more buyers with sales tax that we probably need to be keeping an eye on.
