Ebay wants you to fight!

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Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

Ebay wants YOU to help them fight:

http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/federal/sales-tax/


Do you really think ebay cares about us? Do you really think ebay really has our best interest in mind?

If I were ebay I'd be communicating with the government that a good percentage of the funds collected by this sales tax should be earmarked to create better laws (and hiring more people to enforce those laws) to protect people from internet theft. Oh crap, could you imagine, the first thing that this new government entity might do is shut down ebay...

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Posted By: Bill

In this article, they suddenly seem to show an interest to the smaller sellers. Many of whom have probably already taken off due to the fee increases that seem to happen frequently.

Change your socks, drink water, and drive on.

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Posted By: Dave Grimes

.....you knew this was coming -it was only a matter of time before the states decided they wanted their due bite of the Ebay pie. Next will be the state and federal income tax people wanting records so that they can collect their share also.

Did you see that Ebay made record profits in the last quarter?

It begs the question of how much profit is enough.

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Posted By: leon

typical ebay

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Posted By: Dave Grimes

Just found this at the same Ebay site

"Internet Auction Tax Reporting

The Internal Revenue Service is considering a proposal to force “Internet auction sites” (including eBay) to collect “sales” information on their users and report it to the IRS. As currently crafted, the proposal would only apply to online auction sites and not apply to the myriad other small business-enabling enterprises, on or off the Internet.

eBay believes everyone should pay the taxes they owe, and we do more than any Internet commerce site to educate small businesses on their tax obligations. But we believe that any IRS proposal to target under-reported income should apply to either ALL online and offline commercial intermediaries or ALL Internet commerce – not merely online auction sites.
"

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Posted By: Bruce

If this happens, I think the B/S/T on this site could get a bit more crowded.

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Posted By: martindl

I really am quite surprised at the amount of anti-Ebay sentiment on this board given that its been the single most important venue in the history of vintage card collecting. I know that doesn't mean that they/it shouldn't be under strutiny, but again, I'm surprised.

Regardless, good for Ebay. So what if the call to arms is self serving; it also serves Ebay's sellers and buyers. If state taxes have to be applied to every transaction, sellers will leave in droves and buyers will be all the worse off for it. What about international taxation, etc?

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Posted By: jackgoodman

Aren't sellers able to log onto ebay using their international sites and wouldn't that make tracking sales and income more difficult? Just a question.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Aren't all you red-blooded, patriotic Americans already paying your full share of the revenues needed to sustain this great nation?

Tax avoidance; the REAL national pastime.

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Posted By: Scott T

As a fiscal conservative, I oppose all new taxes just on principle alone.

Scott

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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

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Posted By: warshawlaw

So pull your panties out of your behinds and calm down.

Sales tax: The proposal in question does not increase the tax burden, it proposes to change the enforcement mechanism. As Max accurately reports, every state that has a sales tax already has a law requiring buyers of out of state goods to self-report and pay a use tax. This would reallocate the burden to the sellers to collect tax and remit on every level. I do not believe that a law written that way could ever pass muster with the Supreme Court unless it created a central clearinghouse for tax collection that would require a seller to make only 1 report and remit to only 1 jurisdiction. That is even less likely to happen than a Federal sales tax. If you want to bypass the whole sales tax thing, incorporate a business in a no-tax state (there are a few) and handle all your sales there.

Income tax: Nothing new is being added. The IRS is considering a rule to require ebay to report the results of online sales to the IRS. It would be like a 1099, a means of cross-checking returns for compliance with existing tax reporting laws.