The explanation they gave me as to why it should be that way was riddled with inaccuracies. I provided proof of my business entity’s sales tax license, EIN, business-related financial accounts, they still insisted that as a sole proprietor I must use my PERSONAL checking account and SSN. I insisted this was wrong and pushed until they escalated my approval.

In dealing with the escalations team, I received a copy/paste answer telling me I needed to provide X document, and after doing so, the same copy/paste request for the document they just got. (Which shouldn’t even have been necessary in the first place.) My accountant pointed me at some tax code I could cite in telling them they were wrong, and they rejected THAT with a copy/paste answer.

It took a draft letter from my financial institution referencing the same documents I’d already provided: sales tax license, EIN letter, and business ownership info acquired from my state’s Secretary of State, to get them to relent.

And for nearly a year after they finally accepted the proper documentation and reporting, I was greeted with a banner every morning claiming that there was a problem with my payment method, and payments could be withheld or delayed. I filed a bug report the first day, providing proof that I had in fact been approved by the MP escalation team, and of course could never get any further information about what they were doing to “fix” the problem.

Know what fixed it? Surpassing $20K in sales through Managed Payments in the following fiscal year to trigger the mandatory 1099K.

No matter what anyone at eBay, be it the MP team or regular reps, told me, that was why they were pushing personal info over business info. Someone somewhere didn’t want to deal with business level reporting until they had to.

They happened to push me into MP before I hit the 20K cutoff through PayPal, although I had surpassed it by the time the approval went through, and then they refused to issue a 1099K because I didn’t hit $20K with MP during the remainder of the year thanks to their delayed approval.

My accountant was NOT happy and speculated that this was done on purpose. Although with MP, how can you tell whether it’s something intentionally shady instead of sheer incompetence?

With the current labor shortage, it will be easy to find a decent paying job if need be.