eBay’s government relations team provided an update on the issue of online sales tax in a post on the eBay Mainstreet website on Thursday. The message: states were busy in 2019 updating and enacting sales-tax laws following the Supreme Court’s South Dakota v Wayfair decision, and states are resuming activity in 2020.
Nearly every state with sales tax had adopted a remote seller law, eBay wrote, and 39 jurisdictions (38 states plus Washington, DC) extended collection requirements to “marketplace facilitators” like eBay.
eBay said that under marketplace facilitator laws, it’s required to calculate, collect, and remit sales tax on behalf of sellers for items shipped to customers in those states.
After an “active year” in 2019, state lawmakers “picked up where they left off,” moving to adopt new laws that require out-of-state sellers without a physical presence in their state to collect and remit sales tax, it said.
eBay provided a link to a list of states for which it is currently collecting sales tax as well as states where future implementation is scheduled.
eBay also provided some recent examples of states passing new online sales-tax laws, including Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
Florida and Missouri have not yet adopted an economic nexus law for remote sellers or marketplace facilitators, eBay said, but lawmakers in those states are working on bills that could impact its marketplace and sellers.
eBay also noted that Georgia passed a marketplace facilitator law that will take effect April 1, 2020.
“As states debate new IST laws or seek to revisit their existing requirements, eBay will continue to advocate for workable tax policies that provide reasonable small business protections and streamline collecting and remitting standards across the states to avoid confusion, mistakes, and costly penalties.” (IST stands for Internet Sales Tax)
The full announcement is available on eBayMainstreet.com.
So we can assume eBay will continue to talk about Sales Tax as a reason for their flat revenue and GMV decline every quarter. Just one of their many excuses. Isn’t it funny how the other ecom platforms keep showing double digit revenue and GMV growth? Sales Tax is everywhere and isn’t the problem. eBay is the problem
Ebay is using sales tax to increase profits. They are failing to exempt items that are not taxable. For example food products and OTC medicine in Connecticut. They’re also trying to keep taxes paid on the original purchase price of a item even if a refund is issued. I purchased a piece of audio equipment damaged during shipping that took a month to sort out. The seller issued a partial refund and it took several calls by me and the seller to get the $100 sales tax refunded. It is pretty certain Ebay would have pocket the cash if the seller and I weren’t as diligent.
Ebay will start to cry claiming the sale’s tax laws are too complicated.. BS! Amazon gets it right every time. Even the Kohl’s website was able to figure out tax exempt week for back to school in CT and not charge sales tax. If Greedbay spent money addressing the sales tax issue instead of promoted listings and spamming seller listings with competing items they might not be so hated.
You still nee to reach a certain threshold for a state to be REQUIRED to collect sales tax. It would be lovely is SOMEONE would go to the trouble of putting that chart together. i don’t make enough sales in any one state to need to collect sales tax. I do collect it for my own state–only because those tax folks can be evil.
I have read that certain marketplaces are going to charge sellers for collecting & forwarding the sales taxes. This is absolutely wrong and I hope this one gets squashed. Especially as those marketplaces will report & pay the states on a quarterly basis, meaning that they get to use those funds (interest,) until such time as the taxes are forwarded to each state. At the very least–as marketplaces those legal requirements are the cost of the marketplaces doing business. I certainly would not charge a customer for collecting their sales tax and then paying it to the state. Nor would any retail business. Get real.