Ebay wants you to fight!

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

So pull your panties out of your behinds and calm down.

Sales tax: The proposal in question does not increase the tax burden, it proposes to change the enforcement mechanism. As Max accurately reports, every state that has a sales tax already has a law requiring buyers of out of state goods to self-report and pay a use tax. This would reallocate the burden to the sellers to collect tax and remit on every level. I do not believe that a law written that way could ever pass muster with the Supreme Court unless it created a central clearinghouse for tax collection that would require a seller to make only 1 report and remit to only 1 jurisdiction. That is even less likely to happen than a Federal sales tax. If you want to bypass the whole sales tax thing, incorporate a business in a no-tax state (there are a few) and handle all your sales there.

Income tax: Nothing new is being added. The IRS is considering a rule to require ebay to report the results of online sales to the IRS. It would be like a 1099, a means of cross-checking returns for compliance with existing tax reporting laws.