*Moderators - please leave this post in the selling section. This issue affects sellers as they will pay extra fees and will bear the brunt of any negative feedback or chargebacks from this issue.*
I've seen several reports here in the community and on Twitter of exorbitant tax amounts being charged on batteries.
Looking at the amounts involved, it appears to me that eBay made an error with an update that presumably was meant to address various state regulations regarding fees for sale/recycling of lead acid batteries for cars, boats, RVs etc. but eBay was applying these fees to all batteries instead.
One example from Twitter was a 10 pack of watch batteries for $3.89 which incurred $5.31 in sales tax. The buyer was in New York and said tax is usually 8% for his location. That should have been $0.31. The extra $5 appears to possibly be a "return incentive payment" per NY regulations for Lead Acid Batteries. Other states have similar lead acid battery regulations at different amounts.
Other examples in this thread from @rarehorology showed the fees really added up for multiple quantities! Presumably eBay was applying whatever the applicable state fee was on a per battery basis.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Buying/363-sales-tax/m-p/31449192/highlight/true#M333083
While I'm not sure how many people would have completed checkout on a $50 order with $500 tax, many smaller orders may have slipped through. The Twitter example I provided was a completed and shipped sale.
Reports are that the calculation error may be fixed now, but there are multiple concerns here. First, eBay needs to make a public announcement acknowledging the error and immediately refund any excess taxes paid. Not only is it the right thing to do for buyers, it may head off negative feedback and chargebacks for sellers as well.
Secondly, eBay needs to refund any and all excess fees sellers paid on those incorrect tax amounts. Sellers using PayPal would have been charged 2.9%. Managed Payments sellers are on the hook for the full simplified fee on that amount. Regardless of the payment processor used, this is 100% eBay's responsibility to rectify.
eBay also needs to protect sellers from any negative consequences of this error by removing negative feedback and making sure any related claims or defects do not hurt the seller's account in any way.
This issue has been brought to eBay's attention and tyler@ebay says he has passed it on to get more clarity. While I understand we are in the midst of the holidays, I do hope eBay addresses this issue before end of year.
tyler@ebay wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:I have heard from one affected buyer that they received an email confirming a refund for the overcharge today.
tyler@ebay please confirm if eBay is proactively reaching out to all affected buyers and confirm if affected sellers are also receiving refunds for the additional fees.
Hi @valueaddedresource - I'm not able to confirm this. The last interaction with the tax team I had (last week) was that anyone who felt that they were charged tax incorrectly should contact Customer Service and request that a ticket be filed with them (the tax team).
I have been working with them since to help them understand (again) the nature of what we saw happen, that it appeared to be systemic in nature and less of an isolated incident, and what kind of resolution the community expects in this situation. They have not responded.
tyler@ebay - this systemic issue seems to be either still here or rearing its head again.
I just tested - alkaline button batteries in the Consumer Electronics>Multipurpose Batteries & Power>Single Use Batteries category showing over $6.00 in tax with a shipping address in New York.
Again it would appear that eBay is adding in state recycling fees for lead acid car batteries ($5.00 in NY) to any item listed in a battery category.
When this issue was previously discussed, eBay's answer was buyers who believe they had been overcharged sales tax could call customer support for assistance, however there was never a satisfactory answer provided about *sellers* being overcharged for fees because the incorrect higher tax amount would be used for the calculation.
I am in Arizona and our sales tax is 8%.
Here is Ebay's response to my tax problem.
Our team has been made aware of this issue and we are currently working on a fix. In the meantime, we will need to manually refund the overcharged sales tax once you purchases the item.
Here is my checkout.
@1houdini wrote:I am in Arizona and our sales tax is 8%.
Here is Ebay's response to my tax problem.
Our team has been made aware of this issue and we are currently working on a fix. In the meantime, we will need to manually refund the overcharged sales tax once you purchases the item.
Here is my checkout.
Thanks @1houdini ! From what I'm seeing online it sounds like AZ has a battery core charge of "not more than $15" for lead acid batteries but unfortunately that doesn't give us a specific amount to try to work the math backwards from.
To make things even more confusing, it appears to me that eBay is adding the item price plus the battery fee then applying the regular sales tax amount to that total, but then including the battery fee with the tax amount as far as how it is displayed in check out.
It's hard to tell for sure because they don't break it out separately, but just for example in the test from my screen shot, for that address in NY, the sales tax rate should have been 8.8%.
$6.99 + $5 (battery fee) = $11.99 x 8.8% = $1.06 sales tax. $6.99 + $5.00 + $1.06 = $13.05
So not only is there this extra fee that shouldn't be there, it seems buyers are paying tax on that fee as well even though the fee itself is being shown as included with tax.
I'm glad support at least confirmed you can get a manual refund for the overcharge after checkout, but buyers really shouldn't have to overpay and then jump through hoops to get back the difference.
