Quote:
Originally Posted by BobC
The trick here is that Ebay USED to own Paypal. As the owner of the company that was handling the collection and payments, it meant that Ebay was effectively handling all the payments and collections. Splitting Paypal off meant it was now being handled by a completely separate company so Ebay no longer had direct control in the handling of payments and receipts. The same disconnect will occur with this new Dutch company. They are not owned or controlled by Ebay, so once again, Ebay is effectively not collecting receipts or remitting payments. I believe from the article you read that the control they are referring to is in what functions and uses the new Dutch firm will set up specifically for Ebay and their users. As the article noted, even though Ebay is a big percentage of Paypal's business, it is still only 13% as of late. So the things Ebay may have wanted Paypal to do may not make sense to Paypal, and thus they may have turned them down. Don't know that for certain but, that could likely be another reason Ebay ended up looking elsewhere for online payment support from someone willing to tailor the software to what Ebay wants but, still not have Ebay directly own it so they could be considered as directly directly collecting and paying receipts and remittances.
Like I said earlier when someone else tried to suggest that Ebay was like an auction house. I pointed out all the differences and why the auction house was responsible for having to charge, collect and remit sales taxes. Ebay is looking to not have any of the same responsibilities as an auction house so they can not be held accountable, responsible or liable for collecting and remitting sales taxes. They just want to be the platform used by others to buy/sell online.
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My belief is that the reason ebay sold off paypal several years back had little to do with today's sales tax situation. It likely had more to do with ebay capitalizing on their "investment" in paypal.
Even today, paypal is not required to complete sales on ebay and payments (via CC) can be processed directly through eBay's software. I know, I have done it twice now in the past few months.
Based on the article, ebay is looking to become more involved (translates to making more money) on processing payments, as this will generate additional income for them(that PP is currently receiving). In other words, ebay is no longer using PP and switching to this new payments processing company because they will get more of a cut of each payment than they were from PP.
Likely, the changing of payment processors by ebay has nothing to do with this evolving sales tax situation.