ebay finds that PWCC engaged in shill bidding?

[BobC]

Very eloquent post Howard, I think you drop the mic after that one.

I will respond to the one separate topic you asked about in regards to Beantown's original post and question of if someone deciding to take their items out of PWCC's vault is subject to a taxable event for doing so.

First off, he didn't stipulate what type of tax he was referring to. In this case I believe you have two possible choices, Income Tax or Sales Tax.

For Income Tax purposes, as long as the item isn't being removed from the vault to be sold and the owner is merely moving an item elsewhere and still retains ownership of it, there is no Income Tax event that has taken place......period.

Now as for Sales Tax, I'm going to say removal of an item from a vault is probably not a Sales Tax triggering event either. I'll explain why I only said probably and how someone could end up having a sales tax issue. First, remember there are two different ways an item you own could get into the vault.

1. You bought the item and actually took possesion of it at your home or elsewhere, and then you later on either shipped it off to or delivered it personally (think of vault submissions made at the National) to PWCC.

2. You bought the item (say off Ebay or from an AH) and had it shipped directly to PWCC in Oregon, or you bought the item from PWCC and just had them keep it in their Oregon vault for you. In either case you never personally received or took possession of the item before it went straight into the vault in Oregon.

In regards to scenario #1, I would assume you would have already paid whatever state sales tax was due on your purchase, depending on which state you live in and had it delivered to, or which state you were actually in when buying it in person. And in case you live in and had it delivered to you in a state with no sales tax, or personally bought it while in a state with no sales tax, there would have been no sales tax due in either of those instances. So if you took an item you first acquired under any of these circumstances and susequently sent it to the PWCC vault in Oregon, and then some indefinite time later on decided to take your item back out of the vault to take home with you, that subsequent removal of the item should not be a sales taxable event. You had already paid whatever sales tax was originally due at the time you bought the item, so moving it in and of the vault won't create a Sales Taxable event for the owner.

Now in the case of scenario #2, the item you acquired was sent straight to your vault account in Oregon. And since Oregon has no state sales tax, you shouldn't have been charged or paid any sales tax on that item's purchase. Remember, when you purchase something online or remotely, the state sales tax is charged based on where the item is actually shipped to and supposedly going to be used, stored or kept. So if you originally had the acquired item shipped to Oregon and the vault, no sales tax was due, and technically you should be able to later on take that item out of your vault and go wherever you want with it without triggering a Sales Taxable event.

Here's the "but" though. Remember that sales tax is charged based on where an item is delivered and then supposedly stored, kept or used. So as long as someone has their acquisitions initially sent to, and subsequently kept in the vault in Oregon, they are fine and have no sales tax issues. But what if you have someone who opened a vault account specificallty to cheat the state they live in out of sales tax that rightfully was due them. This could fairly easily be done by having everything you acquire sent to the Oregon vault first, and then after some period of time always keep having everything sent to your home. This would be a blatant abuse of the rules as it was clearly never the intention to store, keep or use the items in Oregon. If the state the abuser lived in ever found out what they were doing, I think they could easily go after them and win.

The thing is though, each state has their own unique sales and use tax law so what one state might say or do, another may not. Also, how would a state even find out about such an abuser? They don't really have the staff and resources to investigate things like this, and even if they did, they may still pass on doing anything if they feel the potential claim isn't worth the time and expense to pursue the case. Also I gave you the clearly easy, slam dunk example of an intentional sales tax scofflaw. What about someone that leaves some things in the vault for say a couple years before deciding to take some, not all, items out and have them sent to his home. Or to be very relevant, because of all the issues going on right now, say someone decides to get all their things out of the PWCC vault for very real concerns and other valid business/investment reasons. They clearly did not do that to get around paying sales tax, but how would a particular state they lived in view that and could they decide to possibly go after them for it, if they ever even could find out about it to begin with?

To my knowledge, no state has a specific time frame threshhold in its sales and use tax laws definitively stating that if you had left an item for at least some minimum, specific period of time in a vault like PWCC's before taking it out to bring home with you, that you would automatically be exempt from that item possibly being looked at for sales tax due your home state. If ever questioned on something like that, I'd try and show the sales tax auditors the activity and purpose of item movements in and out of the vault to hopefully demonstrate there was no purposeful intent to evade paying sales taxes, and then cross my fingers they accept the argument.

How a particular state would ever find out about such vault movements to begin with is beyond me. So if I was advising someone that was not blatantly using the vault to just cheat and get around paying sales taxes, I'd tell them to go ahead and move their items out of the vault, and retain all pertinent documents and records of vault movements and activity from when they originally opened their account in case they ever had to present it as evidence to prove the point that they did not use the vault to cheat on sales taxes. Of course the best advice is to consult your own tax adviser and possibly have them look into the sales and use tax laws for the specific state you are in, and also review the specific item movements and activity in your vault account to see if their are any additional issues or questions that may stick out.

There is one sure fire way to make sure you'd have no sales tax issues if you did decide to remove your scenario #2 items from PWCC's vault. And this is no plug or endorsement, but if you simply have everything transferred over to Goldin's vault, they also are in a state with no sales tax either I believe. Just a thought. Good luck.