Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
I don't see that ever happening. Why would EBay want to destroy their business? Why would they want to take on an unnecessary burden? If they force all sellers to charge sales tax when 90%+ don't need to, most of those sellers will leave. I collect sales tax on sales within my state and send it to them. In the unlikely event I need to do it for other states I will. I will not charge people sales tax on items they don't need to pay it on.
This decision is aimed at large resellers like Warfare, who hurt small business by not charging sales tax and states who have seen revenue decrease because of large online retailers. It is not aimed at trying to collect on every single sale, even if it is an individual selling an used item that they no longer have need of.
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This is not technically aimed at Ebay since they are only a platform used by seller's to create a marketplace for selling their goods online. The burden for actual sales tax collection, reporting and remittance is on the actual sellers who own and sell their inventory. Someone like Wayfair is the actual seller themselves so they are charged with having to collect and report the sales tax. What Ebay is likely concerned about is that even if they are not technically responsible for collecting the sales tax, they do have records and data concerning all the sales transactions and buyer and seller data that the various states would come after and start demanding from them to enforce their various state sales tax laws. And as soon as people selling on Ebay realize their information may be getting reported to the states, they may decide to drop off Ebay and look to sell on other sites and venues where the states may not be looking so strongly at yet, or just quit selling altogether as they don't want to deal with the hassle. Because of the added work and such involved, it could end up costing Ebay business down the road, and thus it makes sense that they would try to fight this up front.
Also, I'm not sure that Ebay could specifically force sellers to use software created by them to calculate and collect sales tax. By doing so it may end up looking like they are admitting to the states that they actually are responsible for the sales and collections of sales taxes, which they definitely do not want to do.