eBay vault

[BobC]

Between Ryan's and my posts you should now have a pretty good idea of how sales tax works with these vaults, and why they put them in states with no sales taxes, if you didn't before already. (Nice post by the way Ryan!)

My original comment about Ebay's vault and sales taxes was because of what their website, that Steve posted the link to, said about how if you chose to take your cards out of the vault you would then be charged applicable sales tax. But as Ryan and I were pointing out, that shouldn't be the case if the cards you had in the vault are going to be kept in there for an extended period of time before you go to remove them. But Ebay's site in that link doesn't say they will ever stop charging you sales tax upon removal of your cards from their vault, regardless of how long you leave your cards in there. So that may be something that anyone thinking of using Ebay's vault might want to double check with Ebay on before signing up. And you can, and probably should, also ask the same questions of PWCC or Goldin if you're ever thinking of using one of their vaults as well, or for comparison purposes if you're trying to decide among them which one to actually use.

It is possible Ebay will stop charging you sales tax on vault removals after a specified period of time, but just didn't spell it out on that linked site. I'm guessing that won't be the case though, and that they will potentially hit you with a sales tax charge whenever you take something from the vault. And the reason I say that is because doing so helps generate more business for Ebay. If you have a card in Ebay's vault, and decide to sell it through an AH, you'll have to now pay the applicable sales tax to get the card out of the vault and over to the AH. But if you sell the card out of the vault through Ebay, you don't get hit with the sales tax, while Ebay gets their fees from the sale.

So if that is the clever/sneaky thing Ebay is doing to boost and retain even more business, keep that in mind if you're ever thinking of using a vault service, and then trying to decide among the different ones available, which would be best for you.