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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
What Ebay is most afraid of is the fact that if taxes must be collected, they will have to administer the program. No, small sellers will not have to write a check to Podunk County, Arkansas for 12 cents because someone bought a $4 item, and their local tax rate is 3%.
Ebay will have to charge the Podunkian the tax, and send the payment. This (God forbid) means more employees will need to be put on the payroll, which will cut into their already small profits.
It will also prevent dropship artists from charging a tax and then pocketing the money. This may cause many drop shippers to go out of business, since these profits (from collecting taxes that are never remitted to the proper authorities) are most often more than what is made on the actual “sale”.
When eBay Payments kick in, they will be the merchant of record, and the states will be after them.
Yes they will and they will have to do more programming which will be an absolute mess.
They won’t get my signature. I’m all ready for structured online sales tax. It’s long overdue.
I don’t know the #’s. But it’s got to be hurting city and state budgets.
What the Sam Hill do you people not understand ?
It is UNCONSTITUTIONAL to lay tax on items sold over state lines.
ARTICLE 1, SECTION 9, PARAGRAPH 5 :
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
Stupid people.
Stupid decision! Why not just raise foreign seller fee so that can prevent money outflow. we can collect more taxes on foreigner, and we can also increase our incomes.