Deadlord wrote in eBay sales tax?:Hi all!

When the hell did this sales tax crap start? I live in a tax-free state; so now the concept is to charge sales tax and make the buyer pay it? Or am I going to be on the hook?

I think they just make up whatever sh!t they like to please Government. In the UK they take tax off of the seller for some things and not for others, and they report your sales to the Inland Revenue after a certain value just to make sure you don't sell things and don't tell the tax man about how much you made. Of course if you don't have proof of purchase to offset against it, then you can't prove you're not selling household scraps and you can't argue that it isn't all pure profit and should be taxed as additional income at the your top tax rate, and in the UK that moves you from someone who earns and has tax deducted by his employer, to someone who has to do their own tax return every year, which is a major pain for a lot of people, but then that's something you all are used to over on your side of the pond anyways, so that's no biggie for you. One of the many ways eBay are killing the people they consider to be selling household sh!t and polishing their shopfront for respectable foreign tat.

I remember when if I wanted a DVD or a book I would go on eBay and buy it second hand. Now it's cheaper and more reliable to buy from Amazon, which I'm guessing was the whole point of eBay's changes in policy from the outset. Push as many buyers to Amazon as possible, and pour all your profits into Amazon stock. F"ck knows, but eBay has been pushing hard to destroy the business for years.

Wait until you find out just how much power a buyer has over a seller if you sell on eBay. And don't expect to get your goods back if things go wrong. There is no obligation on the buyer to prove they gave it back for them to be given their money back. All they have to do is prove that they are reasonably dissatisfied with the sale.

smarmy1 wrote in eBay sales tax?:I noticed a 'Sales Tax' line item started appearing last July on my eBay order confirmations.  In Alabama, this charge is 8% of the purchase price excluding shipping.  

Your question prompted me to dig a little deeper and I found the following article:

Taxes and import charges | eBay

In searching this matter, I found the following on the eBay web-site:

By law, sellers have to declare and pay taxes on income earned from eBay sales. We recommend checking with a tax advisor to understand your responsibilities.

If you're a managed payments seller, and have more than 200 transactions and generate more than $20,000 in sales in a calendar year, you'll receive a Form 1099-K from eBay. This information will also be reported to the IRS and your state tax authority, where applicable.

Only managed payments sellers will be eligible to receive 1099-K forms from eBay. If PayPal or another authorized payment service processed any of your eBay payments during the calendar year, you may receive a separate form from them if your transactions meet the thresholds.

This makes it seem like, as long as you aren't doing $20,000.00 worth of business, or have over 200 transactions, eBay doesn't report anything to the authorities.  Maybe it's not worth anyone's while when sales are low by their definition?  

Deadlord wrote in eBay sales tax?:What the motherfuck! NOWHERE does it say shit about NH that I can see. There is no sales or income tax in NH.

Taxes and import charges | eBay

Unbelievable. Well, I have a fair amount of stuff to sell off (not just D&D), and I think I'll look into other avenues. Money is much less important than taking it up the onion from eBay. Where else do you guys go besides that scum pit?

I may be mistaken, but while you probably have to pay sales tax on purchases from sellers in states with sales tax, you don't have sales tax in NH and your buyers won't be charged sales tax if you choose to sell on eBay.  I would not rely on this opinion.  

If you want to sell somewhere else, this thread has some advice and suggestions:

eBay or RPG Auction FB

Facebook Acaeum is another option for selling: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Acaeum/

Good luck!  

aia wrote in eBay sales tax?:Well, i sold a dice yesterday. I sold it via ebay.com and not ebay.it and i got 2,5 usd as tax in addition to the final amount...
I am not a professional seller, i havent a VAT code... In my country a sale among private citizens is tax free... What should i do with this money? I was thniking to send a refund to the buyer....

That money was supposed to go into the tax coffers of the United States of America. We generally spend our public funds on defense, so your $2.50 would have likely gone toward purchasing one single bullet. The best way for you to compensate us for the loss is to carry around a bullet until you see an American. Approach discreetly & hand over the bullet, then walk quickly away. On behalf of all taxpayers in this great nation, I thank you in advance.

Why not go the whole hog and send the IRS a list of everything people sell attached to their home addresses on a database.
The IRS can then sue anyone who makes a mistake in their tax return claiming fraud and recover their costs through putting liens on peoples homes.
In fact, why not make it mandatory for any institution acting as a middle man to report all sales to the IRS in a format that is easily searchable and ties to the sellers address. That way only businesses will be able to survive, and only those big enough to employ enough people and with the turnover to cover those wage bills.
Mom and Pop seller will be no more.
Hey, but at least we're free to live and work the way we want to, right?

At the point at which sellers cannot sell to buyers without having to factor in whether or not they wish to ship to another country, what the tax implication is, whether they can trust the buyer because the buyer has the power to defraud them, and whether eBay is intentionally going to facilitate all of the above, that tells me eBay is no longer a business I am going to support.

Happy New Year from the UK Government

By order of the UK Government, you sellers of goods to UK customers must now register with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (IRS), collect VAT (sales tax) on everything you sell to UK buyers, and make payments to HMRC every quarter just as you would if you were a UK business (and you get fined if your payment is late, and you get fined if your payment is zero, and you don't make a declaration of a zero payment.)

That's a big FU to all you who have a relationship with buyers in the UK, courtesy of the British people's elected Government. Time for ALL online retailers around the world to stop selling to us in the UK. I'm gonna call this one the Amazon Monopoly Bill, 'cos it gives a de facto monopoly to Amazon to handle all sales into the UK worldwide.

The real questions are...
How much risk are you willing to take in order to deal with us in the UK?
Do you thing the UK Govt. have friends in the US who will enforce and punish those who ignore this?
Do you have the savings to pay to fight it if you're wrong?

We faced the same thing in the UK when the US Govt. required anyone offering banking services to US citizens of report and lay open their books and their banking practices, and we simply stopped all US citizens banking in UK banks and closed all their accounts rather that deal with the sh!t your Govt. required. Except obviously for those banks who's fees cover such things and who's clientele do not fall within the normal banking masses.

This is f"cking hilarious - It won't be talked about in the UK media.

jkason wrote in eBay sales tax?:Not a problem. Just list on the Acaeum FB Group or RPG Auctions Group (most of us here are members in one or both of those groups), do a friends and family transfer of funds through Paypal (most of the members here are trustworthy), and ship on the down-low in a non-amazon box. BIG GOV'T is not going to waste time opening boxes at the ports when there is an economic crisis going on.

Lol.
In the UK the Post Office, and all other couriers, are allowed to charge an £8 fee over and above any package they open and apply VAT to, and they get to keep that £8 processing fee whether or not the VAT they apply to a package is correct or not. They have always had a financial incentive to assess and/or open all packages entering the UK and apply charges to them.
Early days but it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Easy one for US businesses to dodge.
UK consumers will just have to suck it up.
Damn good way to slow capital leakage abroad and force consumers to spend more of their money with British retailers though - Even if everything still gets spend abroad, the Govt. claws back an average of 20% on it, and either the resellers suck it up by lowering prices, or the buyers stop buying and spend in Britain with the same tax going to Govt. As a control mechanism this is a win-win for the UK Govt. 99% of the herd will either never know about it or don't have the ability to understand it anyways.

Ah, sorry! Second question: the mind who conceived this is even more bright than you could think if you consider that UK is now outside EU... Who could really think that an EU customer would now follow the UK fantasy- based rules?!?