eBay Reporting Could Hamper Sellers at Tax Time

by: ebayout

If the info is there, what's that involve...a couple lines of code?
Like my landlady from 40 years ago was wont to say...how stupid do you think I am?

by: Silver Ice King

They have only had 5 years to plan for these things and should have been thinking of what was needed all that time.  Instead all Wenig wanted to focus on was finding new ways to punish sellers and show them that Ebay owns them.  If Ebay spent half of the time on fixing their programs and reports that they do coming up with more ways to make life harder for Sellers, imagine just how great this company could have been!!

by: COVID-19

Thanks, eBay!  NOT!

by: Mighty Mouse

Don't expect anyone to be looking out for your business well being, at the end of the day you are on your own.  Be Happy, Don't Worry.  LOL

by: I Must be Crazy

This tax year should be interesting.

I use a third party to capture all of my transaction level detail. Been using GoDaddy Bookkeeping since 2012. I have been very satisfied with them. I would recommend that anyone with a fair amount of transactions get onboard with a company such as this.

Ebay's numbers never balance. The time it takes to identify discrepancies is not worth the value of that time. I use figures that I can validate and support in an audit if needed. Sometimes I force balance a total. But the few extra dollars in taxes is less than I would spend trying to figure it out.

The managed payments reports that I have downloaded are full of discrepancies against eBay's own sales reports within seller hub. How in the world can that be? Those morons have had 5 years to figure all of this out. There is no excuse to have not had a reporting system setup to download a full tax year's worth of data. And NOT in CSV format! That is nothing but a jumbled mess that requires more time to organize into something that is useful. It is just another half a$$ed effort on their part. Throw something together to extract money quick and everything else be damned.

And yes, I agree with the earlier comment that it should only require a few lines of code. Then again, all of their programming resources are probably exhausted just keeping the garbage site running every day. What a bunch of losers.

by: Rexford

They rushed this rollout and now their slip is showing.  Greed motivates everything that they do. They rushed it because they could not wait to get their hands on additional fees.

eBay including tax as part of our profits when they are the ones who pay the tax is utterly ridiculous. At very least they should be able to provide the history of the taxes collected. The IRS and regulatory agencies should be all over them.

What a freaking mess.    And how many times over the years have we sellers written  that that statement?

by: Rexford

.....and I should have said "when they collect the tax", not "pay the tax".

by: notfunanymore

Imagine that. They didn't calculate this into the code? Or did they do it on purpose so sellers could beg for help? How could they not have known this? What a joke. As a seller, you are not allowed to make any mistakes, you are penalized heavy. But them, ha, makes no difference. Thank God I dont have to deal with this insanity any longer. I feel for you sellers!

by: toastedmutt

Who are these lame brains?  

Time for the IRS to investigate eBay's failure to supply sellers with required tax data.  

 

by: ebayout

Imagine the hair pulling when their 1099s INCLUDE sales taxes....

by: TomH

eBay reporting has always been lousy and incomplete. From the very beginning. Nothing really new here, except maybe that it (eBay reporting data) has gotten even more obtuse.

Maybe because I have a tax background, I have always maintained detail records about my eBay, Amazon and other sales. I've routinely refuted inaccurate reports to IRS by various on-line incompetent's such as eBay. .  

by: Snapped

"eBay told me there's no way for me to go back to 2020 and see how much tax eBay collected on my behalf so I can deduct it from my 1099K."

If that were true, (for MP revenue part) then they would have ‘no way’ to prove to either the IRS, or any state, the veracity of the numbers they will be required to file with each of those. If nothing else, a quarterly summary would be a mandate.

Perhaps all them revenuers et.al. might be interested to learn that.

Meanwhile, as long as you track your own (MP) paid sales totals, those will constitute any eventual total’s on whatever forms the manipulators of eBay’s Abacuses eventually conjure to disguise their ‘simplified-for-you’ skimming. It’s all above the line - zero sum.

What trickles out of the end of eBay’s MP spout is your focus for tax anxieties. Let them explain their wizardry for the lump balance difference that may result to Uncle Sam and all the nieces and nephews governing this tax fracked union. That’s what eBay said they signed up to be, right? - your agent.

by: Rexford

TomH says "eBay reporting has always been lousy and incomplete."

True Tom.  Reporting requires data, so the next time you all here eBay crowing about their data  abilities and initiatives remember this.

Giving a company that does not know how to correctly harness, use, synthesize and be a good steward of that data can be very dangerous.

by: Rexford

You all "hear" eBay crowing.

by: Geetar

Their reporting is just a big mess, and a pile of garbage. all different reports calculated should add up the same.....but it never does.??? WHY?
I dont want to smear sugar over my numbers like ebay does. I want accurate numbers that DONT have any variances. But of course that's impossible because they sugar coat their numbers and arrange them in a way to be attractive to investors.

Also every time they change something, its always catch up to make it balance n the reporting....in the mean time there are always things missing. It's not just one thing, there are usually several numbers mixed up or missing that cause variances that dont make sense. How about before they change anything, make sure they have the proper setup to account for the changes.

Sure you can get down pat what they are doing and have it work for, but when you do they change things again (almost every 6 months). On top of it they dont tell you what they did, how to find what your looking for, or what changes to make. It's like it's a big state secret.

It wont be long before we are targeted by the IRS and state agency's because they know that ebay is giving numbers that are impossible to account for. I see that coming a mile away, they will need revenue because of the virus...."lets look there" THANKS EBAY!

Thank God I am selling less and less on ebay (by choice), and more and more elsewhere. I dont need and extra 2-3 hrs a day work that is not nessesary.

by: selling stuff

Bottom line do not rely on anyone else to keep track of your sales & income. Set up simple Excel files where data is entered with every sale to include gross income, managed payment fees & sales tax collected. Then a simple swipe down the column with your mouse gives you the total.  

by: cfrphoto

According to Harry Temkin: "Being able to go beyond the 90-day window, and that's going to mean you don't have to do a download of your reports on a quarterly basis."  Is this true? Q1 is 90 or 91 days, Q2 is 91 days, Q3 and Q4 are 92 days. Perhaps Temkin should hire staff familiar with financial reporting requirements, the number of days in a year, and problems associated with downloading Orders and Payments transaction reports.

The somewhat good news is that Payment transaction reports can be downloaded for an entire year, but sales tax is missing. Each Payout email links to a Payout summary which in turn links to a Payout detail page but totals are missing. Is downloading a simple Payouts report in spreadsheet format beyond eBay's capability? Is there no one in eBay management who knows how to specify and deliver a simple payouts report?

by: Marie

If you are in MP, the detailed transaction report now goes back so you can capture all of 2020 and it has more info on it now.  It includes the sales tax that Ebay collects and remits.

by: eastwestphoto

Nothing to worry about. Heres what I do:
1. Go to payments, print the page
2. Flip over, go to Expenses, print the fees
3. # the sale , yours, calculate the % it cost you
4. Now you have the whole year add up the total, add up the fees!
5. Keep all shipping receipts in order, add up the fees and miles.
6. Now you have all the data you need and you dont have to ask ebay for anything.
7. Be Organized!

by: toyman

We were able to get the full year (in quarterly reports), by using the "Custom" choice from the drop down menu. Then you just print out each of the four quarterly reports (they are all available) and total them up.

It requires a little more (unnecessary) work on your part, but it is accurate and it will facilitate your tax prep. The only thing that was a pain is that the chosen dates will default on you, if you are not careful. Just make sure, before you do your printout, that the dates are the ones you originally put in the selection window.