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Posted By: Max Weder

New taxes? This isn't the case. The tax authorities are merely looking for more efficient ways to collect taxes (consumption and income taxes) that are already payable. The increase is on the compliance costs for vendors, not in the amount of sales tax that a purchaser has to pay. From an audit perspective, it is much easier to focus on collection obligations from vendors than trying to collect relatively small amounts of sales tax from a multitude of consumers.

Every state with a sales tax requires a purchaser who is not a re-seller to self-assess the tax even if the vendor does not charge it to the purchaser. This includes out of state purchases, as the out-of-state vendor typically is not required to charge the sales tax due to the lack of nexus to the jurisdiction. The fact that very few if any consumers self-assess the tax does not mean that it isn't payable.

While the imposition of a collection burden would indeed increase the costs of compliance to out-of-state vendors, Ebay does not mention that the purchaser is the person required to bear the burder--and pay--the sales tax.


Max