eBay managed payments

[BuckiGuy]

Originally Posted by SetBuilder

This was a decade ago. Today I would imagine that people are much more open about alternative payment methods and a switch like this would probably go a lot smoother.

Hmm.. I think in today's world of fake eBay messages, scam PayPal emails/sites, and fraudulent banking web sites - all of which look so real - most people would be very worried if they went to pay for something in eBay and got taken to an unfamiliar site to enter credit card info. I know I would close my browser instantly and not look back to that buyer again. Just too much fraud and online theft out there. It's way worse than 10 years ago, and people are much smarter about the fraud attempts and go nowhere near things that seem odd or suspicious to them

[Leon]

Originally Posted by BuckiGuy

Hmm.. I think in today's world of fake eBay messages, scam PayPal emails/sites, and fraudulent banking web sites - all of which look so real - most people would be very worried if they went to pay for something in eBay and got taken to an unfamiliar site to enter credit card info. I know I would close my browser instantly and not look back to that buyer again. Just too much fraud and online theft out there. It's way worse than 10 years ago, and people are much smarter about the fraud attempts and go nowhere near things that seem odd or suspicious to them

Besides the fraud aspect I don't like that PP can lock up your money at their whim. No doubt ebay is doing it because of their split with PP. I like PP so we will see how this goes.

[savedfrommyspokes]

As a buyer, payments through my buying account are now direct from my CC to ebay...there is now no longer any record in paypal for these payments.

As a seller, I received the same offer. After reviewing it, the 2.7% ebay fee is obviously lower than the current 2.9% PP charges. Based on what I read in the offer, there are no transaction fees charged. For me, this will be the real savings. I accept a large number of smaller payments, so saving 30 cents per payment is huge. Due to this savings on transaction fee costs, for a full year with receiving the same number and amount of payments LY, going this route will save me 42%.

My questions involve around the reporting. It may have been in the fine print, but will ebay now report my earnings to the IRS and mail me a 1099-k? Will there be the same monthy earnings reports similar to what paypal provides?

[tbob]

I'm not a huge fan of PayPal but I do wish to share a recent occurrence. I purchased a supposed E96 Proof card on eBay. As soon as I received it, I knew it was a fake. To provide documentation of its "unauthenticity" I quickly sent it to SGC and it came back marked "NO." (No reason why-I called them and they said it was skinned but on pressing them they acknowledged it was not a proof). I immediately forwarded all this to eBay and they immediately said "sorry, not sorry" and refused the claim. I contacted PayPal and although it was a hassle, they sided with me and returned my money. eBay did nada, PayPal listened, provided a means of having my money returned after I sent the card back to the seller. I'm sticking with PayPal.
P.S. I see the seller still has several alleged E96 "Proofs" on eBay. Caveat emptor.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by savedfrommyspokes

My questions involve around the reporting. It may have been in the fine print, but will ebay now report my earnings to the IRS and mail me a 1099-k? Will there be the same monthy earnings reports similar to what paypal provides?

I am sure an accountant can give you a better answer but all payment processing entities have to provide a 1099K at the end of the year. Not sure what the threshold is for one being generated. You can generate sales reports already on ebay's site.

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

I am sure an accountant can give you a better answer but all payment processing entities have to provide a 1099K at the end of the year. Not sure what the threshold is for one being generated. You can generate sales reports already on ebay's site.

My accountant probably isn't too familiar with the inner workings of ebay, but will be fine with me providing the total dollar amounts deposited monthly to my checking account from ebay IF ebay does not provide this 1099(I assume they will).

If you know where on ebay there is a report that matches the information contained on the "Monthly Sales" report found under the reports home on the paypal site, please tell. The "sales" reports on ebay are not only very inaccurate/inconsistent, but are also not set up to show "actual" income, just sales (paid for or not). My accountant seems to only care about actual funds changing hands and not about mere commitments to buy .

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by savedfrommyspokes

My accountant probably isn't too familiar with the inner workings of ebay, but will be fine with me providing the total dollar amounts deposited monthly to my checking account from ebay IF ebay does not provide this 1099(I assume they will).

If you know where on ebay there is a report that matches the information contained on the "Monthly Sales" report found under the reports home on the paypal site, please tell. The "sales" reports on ebay are not only very inaccurate/inconsistent, but are also not set up to show "actual" income, just sales (paid for or not). My accountant seems to only care about actual funds changing hands and not about mere commitments to buy .

I do not sell a heck of a lot but I have used the sales reports and they have always been spot on. I have never used paypal's sales reports so not sure if they show the gross sale as well as the net proceeds (after merchant fees) but ebay's have been great for me when I have sold stuff.

I use the Seller Hub. I got to my ebay and do the following: Choose the Selling tab, then choose Orders, then choose All Orders. There you can use the drop down menus for Category of Sale (Store, Auction or All), the Status of the sale and finally the Period of time which you want to get data. This can be downloaded and opened in Excel.

Again, what is missing is the net proceeds from the sale because ebay does not track paypal fees. Not sure if once they manage payments if their reports will also include the deduction for the merchant fees which would then reconcile to the deposits which are made to your bank account.

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

I do not sell a heck of a lot but I have used the sales reports and they have always been spot on. I have never used paypal's sales reports so not sure if they show the gross sale as well as the net proceeds (after merchant fees) but ebay's have been great for me when I have sold stuff.

I use the Seller Hub. I got to my ebay and do the following: Choose the Selling tab, then choose Orders, then choose All Orders. There you can use the drop down menus for Category of Sale (Store, Auction or All), the Status of the sale and finally the Period of time which you want to get data. This can be downloaded and opened in Excel.

Again, what is missing is the net proceeds from the sale because ebay does not track paypal fees. Not sure if once they manage payments if their reports will also include the deduction for the merchant fees which would then reconcile to the deposits which are made to your bank account.

Those reports are great and I unofficially use them regularly, but they do not always reflect the actual changing hands of money. In this report I have had orders (all items paid for together) show up with each item separate on this report causing the income at the bottom to be inaccurately shown. For accounting purposes, I need consistent accuracy which over the last 10+ years, has NOT been provided by this ebay report. In comparing my Aug 2018 PP reporting to the ebay reporting there was a variance of $350 more on ebay (due to glitch mentioned above). Using the ebay reporting could inflate my income by several K a year.

From paypal, each month I print out a "simple" one page day-by-day sales report which accurately shows the money actually changing hands (and matches my 1099), unlike the ebay reporting. This one page report is easier to maintain in case of an audit years down the road than an inaccurate CSV file from ebay which contains each order versus a simple monthly summary.


In addition, these ebay reports (orders) are available for only 90 or so days.
Paypal's reporting is currently available for up to 2 years on the site. While some audits are within a year, others are not, the ebay reporting does not help to verify the information I accumulate monthly through out the year.



In reference to ebay deducting fees from the income at the time of the deposit, the way I read the offer is that the 2.7% fee will be charged to my monthly ebay invoice and not deducted when deposited into my checking account.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

I am sure an accountant can give you a better answer but all payment processing entities have to provide a 1099K at the end of the year. Not sure what the threshold is for one being generated. You can generate sales reports already on ebay's site.

The reporting rules for having to provide a 1099-K each year for seller receipts haven't changed. There are two thresholds that must both be met. Sales receipts for the year have to be $20,000 AND you have to have more than 200 transactions.

What is interesting is that these thresholds apply to each party you use to receive payments, separately. In other words, if during the year you sold on Ebay and received some payments through Paypal, and for others you got a check or took a non-Paypal related credit card for, Paypal wouldn't/shouldn't have a record of those non-Paypal payments. Therefore, those non-Paypal receipts would not count towards meeting the $20,000/200 transactions thresholds that Paypal has to look at in determining if they need to send you a 1099-K at the end of the year.

So lets say you normally do a little over $20,000 and 200 transactions on Ebay every year and have been getting 1099-K forms from Paypal the past couple of years. With this new Managed Account election Ebay is trying to push sellers to, let's say in mid-year you decide to switch and quit using Paypal as your primary payment processor. In that case chances are you won't separately go over $20,000 in sales or 200 transactions through Paypal nor through whoever handles the new Managed Accounts with Ebay. So theoretically neither group will be liable to send you a 1099-K form for that year, even though in total your Ebay sales still topped $20,000 and 200 transactions. The thresholds and reporting liability lie with whomever is responsible for processing and recording the payment activity, and not Ebay itself directly since Ebay is technically not the party that collects and remits the actual payments. At least they currently are not since Paypal in no longer owned by Ebay.

What I don't know yet is how things will work with this new group (Ayden) that Ebay is bringing in to take over for Paypal. I don't believe this new payment processing company is actually going to be owned by Ebay, like Paypal used to be at one time. If that is the case, then I assume that Ebay is still not going to be responsible for tracking and preparing the 1099-K forms for sellers. However, with this new development in regards to the sales tax rules, it seems that for certain states Ebay is now going to take responsibility for charging, collecting and remitting sales tax on behalf of all sellers to sales made to buyers in these certain states, beginning at some point in the near future. Well in that case it sounds and looks like Ebay is now being charged with keeping track of sales in certain states for sales tax purposes, so why shouldn't the federal government also expect Ebay at some point to keep track of all sales through their site for 1099-K reporting purposes?

I haven't seen anything regarding this spelled out anywhere yet. You may try contacting Ebay directly to ask them about how this 1099-K reporting is to be handled going forward, and whether or not that responsibility is shifting to them, or if it will remain with the separate payment processing entities they use. like Paypal or Ayden, this new company they're bringing in to replace Paypal. Check out this story about Ebay replacing Paypal.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Sellin.../td-p/28062479

It unfortunately doesn't give a lot of details(no surprise there), but it does mention allowing for Ebay to better track information and sales activity for sellers. It includes the usual generic fluff about how they're doing everything for the benefit of the buyers and sellers, even though we all pretty much know they are primarily doing this for their own benefit, and/or to keep ahead and help mitigate things to come from all these recent changes in rules regarding taxes and reporting responsibilities. We'll have to wait and see exactly how Ebay is going to play this going forward and what pressure and additional reporting liabilities may be placed on them by governmental taxing authorities in the future.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Leon

Besides the fraud aspect I don't like that PP can lock up your money at their whim. No doubt ebay is doing it because of their split with PP. I like PP so we will see how this goes.

Actually Paypal just sent out a notice that they will no longer be tying up anyone's money until a matter is fully investigated and a resolution is made. I am sure in cases of clear fraud that might be different, which it should be.

I doubt eBay is going to be any more kind or fair in their treatment of sellers once they are fully in the driver's seat. Nothing worse than eBay being fully back in control of payments.