eBay asking for sellers help with congress

[bgunness]

Shame on Ebay asking for sellers help in dealing with congress on this new $600 tax reporting bill. 

First off, perhaps you need to make wiser choices when voting. 

Second, where were you eBay when your sellers needed help in dealing with non-paying buyers? You take the side of the buyers and don't allow negative feedback to be posted against them, yet they can post negative feedback against the sellers. It's time you look at your own policies and support the sellers that keep you in business. I personally have been with you since you started in 1998. I refuse to sell anymore because of your rules, policies, and high fees. 

Shame on you! 

[gurlcat]

🍿Following.

[sapphire_studio]

I wonder if eBay is trying to drive up the sales of large companies and remove the small sellers from their platform because of this new law.  They seem very stressed out about the cost for reporting that many people to the IRS. Recently so many people's sales are completely horrific, it just makes you wonder...

[onefootflipper]

There is no reason ebay would want small sellers out. Small sellers are basically 100 percent of the seller market in many categories. Small sellers do have a terrible time competing in categories that are easy to ramp up, but that is not really ebay's fault.

[gurlcat]

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@onefootflipper wrote:

There is no reason ebay would want small sellers out. Small sellers are basically 100 percent of the seller market in many categories. 

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But maybe they wouldn't mind losing some categories altogether.  They've already consolidated specific categories into broader ones repeatedly.  
I HOPE that's a ridiculous assertion, but .....

[sapphire_studio]

Maybe it depends on how you define "small". 

Ebay has around 19 million sellers. Let's say 5 million of them are Hobby sellers making eBay less than than a few thousand a year in sales. Maybe ebay has somehow calculated the cost of dealing with not only reporting their taxes, but answering all their phone calls when tax season rolls around and they have questions. Maybe they determined it would be more cost efficient to drive this type of very small seller off the platform than pay CSR agents to deal with the nightmare.

So maybe they do things like start ANOTHER "Advanced" promoted listing program that works on top of the other one (already robbing sellers), making it even harder for the small sellers to show up in search results. Maybe they change their algorithms to show larger sellers higher in search (if the buyer is going to buy an item anyway why not send them towards the bigger companies?)

Anyway you get my drift.

[nanniestreasurechest]

Every company has been required to do this for years.   I sent 1099's out using the $600 threshold and reported it to the IRS for 20 years until I retired from the company I worked for.   It has just now been implemented on the internet selling companies.  I don't see why the internet companies should be treated any different.   And with the software available today it is not a big deal for companies to keep up with it and send them out.  

[downunder-61]

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Grassroot-Campaign-to-Get-The-1099K-Minimum-Threshold-Raised/t...

[paraquip]

Congress will do nothing to change this...... there is no money in it for them.

If ebay were a large weapons manufacturer or a pharmaceutical company...... Congress would be all over it!

I appreciate the OP for posting this.....but anyone can plainly see our government does not work in the best interest of the people.

HK

[collectintime]

I thought that was a strange request from eBay as well. Why would this make any difference to me? I realize it will be more work for eBay without being able to pass on the man hours and payment to those men and women to the IRS. They are so accustomed to passing on all extras to the seller, oh, wait, they will find a way to increase your final value fees! That is why it is going to be "our" problem, but they would find any reason to raise those fees no matter what. 

[bonjourami]

Ebay 'started' in 1995.

[dbfolks166mt]

     The one irony I find in all of this is the train wreck that eBay never saw coming. When eBay and PayPal split in 2015 and eBay started the transition to managed payments they probably never foresaw the changes to the 1099 reporting requirements and/or the collection of sales tax on all ecommerce sales.

     Had they kept PayPal as the financial processor the 1099 issuance and the sales tax collection would have been PayPal's to deal with just as PayPal does for sellers who utilize other platforms or venues where they receive their payments from PayPal. PayPal has to be one happy camper since they are still getting merchant fees from eBay for any sales paid for via PayPal but they don't have the headache of dealing with the collection of sales tax or the issuance of the 1099's. 

     One has to wonder, but will never know, how the cost benefit analysis is working out now after the changes as opposed to what it looked like before. 

[katzrul15]

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@bonjourami wrote:

Ebay 'started' in 1995.

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It did - but it was not called "e-Bay" until a couple of years later - I think that is where some of the confusion comes in.  We started using it as a buyer once they renamed it, but that was '97 or '98.  

[joseh1445]

Guess what I am going to do.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  eBay wants to have their cake and eat it too.  eBay wants to keep on making money, by taking it off from sellers like me and you and also from buyers.  Let me take my violin out...

[tanyasjewelrybox]

It doesn't matter how many sellers fill out this form, the government is going to pass this bill anyway, because they want to.  End of story...