Any fears in selling large $ items on ebay?

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by glchen

However, there is a paper trail for how much taxes a seller owes on ebay, so it would be too easy to be caught. Every invoice on ebay shows how much sales tax is owed on that item. The state tax board could just go to ebay (in addition to Paypal), and ask how much state tax this seller should have paid for that tax year.

I would find it hard to believe that any state tax auditor would rely on ebay to prove any type of tax evasion as they would likely focus on paypal transactions and more importantly the business/personal bank accounts of the business and it's owner. Ebay is not set up to accurately or effectively disclose in-state purchases and they are not even set up to offer tax documents such as the 1099 form that paypal provides to users with $20k+ in income annually. Just because a bidder "wins" an item on ebay does not mean that there was a taxable transaction that occurred. However either a paypal payment or a deposited check/MO would indeed indicate that a transaction has occurred and if it was an "in-state" transaction the business owner would then be accountable for showing that the proper tax amount was remitted for this transaction or a re-sale certificate was present.