The problem with # of transactions in the state (or something similar) is that at the beginning of the year, who knows if you are going to hit that limit. Let's say in a hypothetical case, New York decides that if a seller has 50 or more transactions in that state, you need to collect the sales tax. Based upon my previous sales, I haven't hit 50 in New York before. But then what if by June, you are up to 40 New York sales, so it seems likely you are going to cross the threshold. What are you going to do? You can't retroactively ask those 40 previous New York buyers to cough up sales tax now for the past sales. You'd have to either eat the sales tax amount yourself, or say after sale 49 to New York, try to say that you will no longer sell to New York residents.

What a nightmare.

And how will this affect Auction House sales...I assume all winners would be paying some sort of sales tax. Even more pain on top of hammer price painl for the buyer, an extreme hassle for the auction house (if sales tax is to directed to state of buyer).

Brian

It’s not only having to collect and remit the sales taxes for the 45 states that have it, and fill out all those forms, but for many cities and counties too. That’s why the number is 11,000 jurisdictions.

The worst part is the rules. For cards they may be simple. But I saw how in one particular state you must collect sales tax for Snickers, but not Twix, because Twix has flour in it and can be considered food, not candy.

That is hilarious. What a world we live in!



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Leon,

These aren't NEW taxes. States have had Sales AND Use tax laws in effect so that if the seller isn't required to collect the Sales tax, the buyer is supposed to report and pay the comparable Use tax on what they purchased. Very few people voluntarily do this. Just look back at the threads where people complain about having to pay Sales taxes on auction winnings from some AHs and not others.

It is exactly because of all those people that have not followed the law and properly calculated and paid the Use tax on their online and other such purchases that the states have had to resort to finally going after the large online retailers to make them start collecting it. To try going after all the individual buyers would be unbelievably complicated, difficult, and most likely political suicide for any state politicians who tried to get that going and backed such a plan. By going after the big online retailers instead, the states can get more revenue all at once than they would by trying to go after each individual buying online. And even though the individual consumers/buyers would still end up ultimately paying the sales taxes, the states and politicians have a little more cushion and less direct anger by not going directly against the individual buyers themselves.

On the state's side of things, as more and more people switch to online/internet buying, the states are losing out on Sales tax revenue they used to get from the brick and mortar stores. It is also helping to more quickly kill off many brick and mortar stores as they can't compete with online retailer prices. When the buyers know they aren't going to get charged Sales tax from an online vendor but, if they buy the exact same item from a store down the street from where they live, they know they are going to get charged sales tax at the store. So guess where the buyer is more likely to make their purchase from, especially the higher the price of the item they are looking to buy?

All the states are trying to do is figure out how to best get the current laws on their books complied with by the buyers, the majority of whom seem to always be trying to figure out how to get around paying Sales or Use taxes they actually owe.

We can play semantics all you want. It's taxes being collected that weren't before. Maybe they shoulda, coulda, woulda, but they weren't.
But again, please call it whatever you want to. As I said, I think it could help some small brick and mortar retail sales stores and they are the ones that seem to be hit hardest by the internet sales tax avoidance issues.

Leon,

Not sure I'd call it semantics but, as a small business owner yourself, I understand where you are coming from and what you mean by it. Though the Sales and Use taxes themselves aren't new taxes per se, what is new is who they are now going to look to for going after and collecting these taxes, and then sending the money to the state. The actual sales tax doesn't come out of your pocket but, the hassle, work, time and expense of collecting and remitting it to the state is now possibly on you and other small business owners, as well as the big online retailers. I understand exactly where you are coming from. It's potentially new tax compliance requirements on small sellers like yourself, not new taxes.

If ebay is able to change their software to both collect and report collections for each state, from there submitting will be a much more manageable task. For my state, I self track my in-state sales and submit one form at year end. It takes me longer to find my password to access my on-line state tax site than it does to submit my taxes. Last year it was less than a 5 min process total to submit for my state. So if ebay automatically tracked and provided a record of all of the annual collections for each state, and each state is as simple as my state, this whole process would probably take no more than an additional 4-5 hours per year.

In regards to increased costs to card collectors, just like every other added cost, sales tax will just get figured into the price. A $3k card will still be a $3k card, now just 5-8% off the price will go to the buyer's state.

I see a whole new venture for online sales tax management.

I would doubt eBay has any need to change software, I can not see where that line of thinking is coming from. Much like why you do not charge sales tax at a garage sale, future laws should in all cases not affect a occasional seller on eBay.

As was quoted earlier South Dakota brought this forth will a set of guidelines that the seller have 100k in business or a minimum of 200 transactions. To take it lower as was theorized earlier would be a enforcement nightmare, the states see this as some cash cow, but will soon find the costs of an enforcement group for this will outpace easily the rewards against crossstate small sellers.

This is for large internet sellers and companies.

I would assume that if you are an eBay seller that is big enough to be going after as a state agency and have it think there is a reward in it, you are either already collecting it or known this was coming eventually because you have been using this income on your 1040 as a job.