Buying & Selling Old Stuff

[Yastrzemski Sports]

Originally Posted by Runscott

This is probably the wrong place for this, but a lot of us buy and sell as a partial business, so I'm sure it's on our minds.

...so I just got charged sales tax on an ebay purchase. I have a reseller certificate, as I run an antique business, and the item purchased is for re-sale.

Washington and Pennsylvania laws went into effect on January 1, 2019, requiring Amazon and ebay to charge sales tax. It's automatic - the seller doesn't have to calculate it, and the seller will be frequently surprised when their customer gets charged. My seller contacted me before I even knew about it - he actually seemed kind of scared as he had no idea what was going on.

The way I read this, is: if all 50 states passed such a law, as a seller ebay would automatically charge sales tax anytime I sell to any of the 50 states. Obviously each state is passing such laws so that they can collect more sales tax. So as a seller, I must report, according to each state's laws, any sales tax I collect from a buyer in that state, TO that state's taxing agency. That would be 50 separate quarterly tax returns (one for each state), possibly some annually, etc., depending on each state's laws.

As a reseller BUYING stuff, I'm just screwed, as it's up to me and the seller of re-sale items to deal with the certificate, and is Bubba in Southeast Ohio really going to want to deal with my reseller certificate?

Am I reading this correctly?

I’m no accountant, but since eBay is collecting and paying the sales tax automatically I don’t think we need to register with other states to collect the tax since it is being done by eBay. It almost seems that we are not the seller, eBay is.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Yastrzemski Sports

I’m no accountant, but since eBay is collecting and paying the sales tax automatically I don’t think we need to register with other states to collect the tax since it is being done by eBay. It almost seems that we are not the seller, eBay is.

My understanding is that etsy and Amazon are paying the states but eBay is not. The Washington state law is that taxes are only to be collected by sellers doing $10,000 annually in sales. I was just charged tax by a seller who has not sold anything in over ten years. He was stunned by eBay doing this automatically. He called them and they refused to remove it.

For those of you who have your heads buried in the sand, your government, at every level, is constantly working on new ways to take every cent in your pocket.

[Yastrzemski Sports]

Originally Posted by Runscott

My understanding is that etsy and Amazon are paying the states but eBay is not. The Washington state law is that taxes are only to be collected by sellers doing $10,000 annually in sales. I was just charged tax by a seller who has not sold anything in over ten years. He was stunned by eBay doing this automatically. He called them and they refused to remove it.

For those of you who have your heads buried in the sand, your government, at every level, is constantly working on new ways to take every cent in your pocket.

I don't understand what you mean. It sounds like you are saying that they are collecting the sales tax with no intent to pay it. Please clarify because I think they are collectimg all of the sales tax for the state and paying it directly.

[steve B]

What it means is that sellers who haven't done 10,000 a year selling into WA aren't obligated to collect sales tax.
I checked the WA DOR site, and couldn't find anything saying a seller under 10K couldn't collect sales tax.
What was interesting was that between 10K and 100K/200 transactions you have the choice to collect the tax, or to post a notice that the buyer is responsible for filing and paying the use tax.

So it seems Ebay is abandoning the claim that they're "just a venue" and acting as a business with 100K/200 transactions and registering to be a vendor.

That means they should be handling the acceptance and filing of the resale exemption forms.
I'm totally not sure, but it looked like there was a form to recover sales tax improperly charged and paid.

[Yastrzemski Sports]

Originally Posted by steve B

What it means is that sellers who haven't done 10,000 a year selling into WA aren't obligated to collect sales tax.
I checked the WA DOR site, and couldn't find anything saying a seller under 10K couldn't collect sales tax.
What was interesting was that between 10K and 100K/200 transactions you have the choice to collect the tax, or to post a notice that the buyer is responsible for filing and paying the use tax.

So it seems Ebay is abandoning the claim that they're "just a venue" and acting as a business with 100K/200 transactions and registering to be a vendor.

That means they should be handling the acceptance and filing of the resale exemption forms.
I'm totally not sure, but it looked like there was a form to recover sales tax improperly charged and paid.

That’s exactly what I thought. Since, through them, millions of dollars is sold in every state they are taking the responsibility to collect all of the sales tax for that state and pay it with no action necessary on our part.
I have no problem with this. They must have a team of lawyers who looked this over and decided this was the best course of action so I’ll defer to them. The law has started to catch up with the internet. I am shocked it took this long. I just hope that when it comes time for my state that they allow me to submit a resale cert so I don’t have to pay sales tax on items meant to resell.