I live in Canada but I have relatives in Washington state which I ship the majority of my cards to in order to avoid the absurd costs of shipping to Canada.
Starting Jan 1st 2019, it seems that ebay is now automatically charging sales tax for anything shipped to Washington state. It seems like there’s a list of other states this will apply to in the coming year. The list can be found on this page under the section “eBay sales tax collection”
www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/taxes-import-charges?id=4121
It’s very unfortunate, I might need to find a new middleman or just ship straight to Canada now. Just wanted to give a heads-up to anyone in one of these states. This could potentially be a trend for other states to follow as well
I’m in TX and not on the list. let me know if I can help.
I sold a PSA 10 blastoise to someone in Washington yesterday and he stated the same thing. It doesn’t show anywhere in my sold listing though so I guess the seller never sees the tax being charged?
Hmm okay I’ll have to read up on it. So eBay will be paying the sales tax for the sellers…? I though sellers weee responsible for collecting and paying tax. Even though I sold the card, I got nothing additional in tax revenue even though I sold it.
For users with a Washington shipping address, ebay will automatically charge the sales tax in the same way a physical store automatically adds on sales tax when you buy something. It’s as if every transaction is happening within WA, it doesn’t matter where the ebay seller is actually from. Ebay collects the tax money and I guess will send it to the WA state government. So as you say, I don’t think you as a seller have to take any additional action here, you’re not responsible for handling sales tax in this case.
Hmm. Well if that is the case that is great for sellers not having to deal with it? But sucks for buyers.
I’m not American or a seller but my understanding is that this basically doesn’t affect anyone outside of WA since sales tax is only relevant if the buyer and seller are in the same state. I guess WA sellers don’t have to worry about sales tax anymore when selling on ebay, which is a plus for them. Any buyer in WA (and I guess those other states on the list, eventually) has to pay tax on everything with is very unfortunate.
Got it, thanks. I was wondering why a few people asked why I’m charging tax and they live in Washington. I live in Arizona so I guess it’s anyone dealing with Washington and I read it will happen for Ohio and Oklahoma soon too.
Yeah, even if you don’t live in any of these states, you may still have to deal with a lot of confused and pissed off buyers 
I’m curious if this will drive people to depend on more of the Instagram “friends&family” model of payment to avoid the taxes.
From ebay - this is a breathe of fresh air for me as a seller. If the IRS is going to require that I charge sales tax out of state, I would much rather ebay collect and remit this so I do not have to deal with submitting 50 different sales tax forms each month.
I can confirm seeing where ebay collected tax from a few WA buyers I had today. That amount did not come to me, just like they have been doing with Australia for some months now.
I remember this nightmare when Amazon started doing it lol. But again, i’m not a seller so I can only complain from my end as a buyer and not the sellers. I’m assuming those of you who have to do taxes for your sales that it can be beneficial.
I hope that with these improvements that ebay can also make county based rates available at least for store subscribers with a nexus. Most states are destination based so the sales tax rates are variable by county.
If you are not paying sales tax on a purchase and you live in a state that charges sales tax - you are legally bound to report that purchase and pay the appropriate sales tax anyways. Most people do not ever submit or report sales tax owed as a consumer so responsibility is being smacked on the seller even though they do not have a nexus in those states.
Same boat here Rusty. It already is a major issue in NY for me. I am due to remit sales tax for NY sales and it varies by county. I briefly touched upon it in your other seller thread guide and if eBay would automatically collect and remit all NY sales tax properly as Amazon does for it’s sellers it would be a huge load off my back. eBay literally doesn’t even have features for me to collect NY sale tax properly for the 80+ jurisdictions.
As a consumer I’d obviously prefer not having to pay sales tax as its cheaper, but as you said it’s always been a legal requirement to report untaxed purchases that were supposed to be taxes. It really doesn’t make much sense that online transactions have skirted sales tax for so long.
The laws however caught up and recently changed and are starting to come into effect this year. Theoretically you and I should already be collecting and remitting for states like IA, CT, NJ, OK etc. but eBay will bring them online later in the year for auto collection. I don’t know about you, but I am just becoming aware of this now and have no way to quickly and no plan to start charging sales tax to each of those states individually. I hope eBay brings this all together on their end, they basically have to as there is no way most sellers can feasibly deal with the ~10,000 different sales tax jurisdictions in the US.
How are you suppose keep this all together if you use PayPal for most of your sales. I doubt they will automatically do this. And how can they automatically charge the sales tax in WA? I thought there was a threshold that has to be passed in each state before charging a sales tax was required?
It’s more complicated since Ebay is a marketplace and therefore subject to different laws than an individual business. Here’s some more info if you’re interested: www.avalara.com/trustfile/en/blog/Marketplace_sales_tax_laws_explained.html
here’s the relevant paragraph:
In Washington, for example, marketplace facilitators [ebay] with a physical presence in the state, or $10,000 or more in retail sales sourced to Washington (including sales made on behalf of marketplace sellers) in the current or preceding calendar year, must either collect and pay tax on sales to Washington purchasers, or comply with use tax notice and reporting requirements. Marketplace sellers that don’t have a physical presence in Washington don’t need to make that choice because “the marketplace facilitator will do so on behalf of the seller.”
Again, the benefit is that sellers don’t have to deal directly with handling the out-of-state sales taxes. The bad part is that buyers from the affected states will be automatically charged extra (6.5+% for WA) on any ebay purchase. People already have a tizzy over a 3% goods and services fee, I can’t see this new system doing anything other than deterring buyers from using ebay, especially for expensive items.
Thanks that makes sense so it’s more of ebays side for the reasoning. As individual sellers are we suppose to start collectioing our own sales tax on PayPal transaction once we reach the States threashold? I guess $10,000 in this instance
They collected on my first transaction in Washington in 2019 so I think the threshold is zero for eBay purposes.