Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › eBay Not Collecting Sales Tax When It Says It Will & Partial Return Glitches
- This topic has 9 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 3 months ago by
sonia.
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10/21/2019 at 5:18 pm #69396
Hello everyone,
I’m a longtime Scavenger Life listener, but new to the forums.
I’m located in one of the states that eBay collects and remits sales tax for. Today I noticed that eBay has stopped collecting sales tax from my state of PA. Or at least it stopped showing up in the order details, whereas, until recently it was showing that eBay was collecting it. Just wondering, with all the recent glitches, if anyone else is experiencing this? I recently submitted my quarterly return to the state without payment thinking that eBay was taking care of it, and now I’m a little nervous that they’re dropping the ball.
Also, yesterday I had a difficult time submitting a partial refund/return to eBay on my laptop – it just wouldn’t go through. Luckily I was able to get it through in time via the eBay mobile app. Just thought I’d pass that along in case anyone else experiences this problem with the new returns process.
Thanks for any input. I greatly appreciate the podcast – it keeps me going.
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10/21/2019 at 8:16 pm #69398
Once eBay started collecting tax for my state, I stopped seeing any tax information.
If you go to your orders page, click on the pull-down menu in front of a sale, and click on “view record”. It will give a breakdown on what the buyer paid. It has the following statement in the line for tax “Sales tax (eBay collected)**”. In states that don’t require tax payment, there is just a 0.
I was able to find a form for NJ “Request to be placed on a non-reporting basis for sales and use tax”. I meant to fill it out earlier, but I ended up reporting zero tax for the third quarter. I will submit it now because I don’t want to keep reporting nothing.
I haven’t had an issue with refunds lately, so I can’t help you there.
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10/22/2019 at 12:22 am #69404
What I do when I want to check is go to “Paid and Shipped” orders, and then click on “download report” on the right side of the screen. You’ll get a spreadsheet of all your orders in the last 90 days, and column AC shows how much tax ebay collected for each transaction. For me, there are so many more line items showing a non-zero tax collected by ebay compared to 4 months ago when I last checked – which makes sense.
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10/22/2019 at 5:24 am #69406
This is good to know, Sonia. I wondered how to find out where/when taxes were collected! So now, I have a question for those on a Mac. When I go to download a report, the report is unformatted for a Mac, and is dizzying to look at. Is anyone else on a Mac? Does anyone have input as to how to format the report for a Mac? Thanks.
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10/22/2019 at 9:15 am #69416
It’s a CSV file – comma separated – which can be read in Excel. If you don’t have Microsoft Office, you can use it for free online / in the cloud.
Apple provides a Mac utility called Numbers that is a simpler spreadsheet program. I’m not sure whether you can download it for free or if you would have to use the online version.
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10/22/2019 at 10:08 am #69419
Thank you Sharyn & Sonia for the info. I will see if my state has the non-reporting basis form, which would make life so much easier. I have been viewing my orders via the “view record” drop down menu, which is where I realized that eBay is not always showing the “Sales tax (eBay collected)**” for my state. Seems like it mainly started happening in the month of October. I’ll have to crosscheck the spreadsheet Sonia is referring to.
I did notice that there is a new sales tax feature on each listing. Instead of there being a check box, there is now a dropdown menu where you have to select your state, fill in the tax percentage and then click a box indicating if you want the shipping and handling to be taxed. This is new, and even though I already have the sales tax form filled out in my preferences, I had to bulk edit my listings to update this new feature. And as Ryanne mentioned in the last podcast, if your item specifics are not correct, you have to manually edit those listings.
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10/22/2019 at 2:58 pm #69451
That state + percentage feature has been there for a while. If ebay collects sales tax automatically for your state, you can leave those blank. Those are only for states where you have to collect the taxes yourself. But if you have something in there, I think ebay just ignores it if it collects for your state.
Unfortunately, for my state I still have to keep filing $0 sales tax returns, but luckily it’s pretty easy.
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10/23/2019 at 12:01 pm #69498
Sonia, in Missouri I can file sales taxes annually since in-state sales are minimal, usually around $100-200 for the year. You might check to see if your state has an annual filing option to cut down a little on paperwork.
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10/23/2019 at 11:56 am #69497
I have the same issue. eBay is supposed to start collecting taxes for my state (Texas) this month and for some they do collect it but not for others. I did remove the tax on all of the listings to see if it will start collecting the taxes for those, but nothing. I don’t even see the “Sales tax (eBay collected)**” for orders in Texas.
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10/23/2019 at 4:01 pm #69507
Thanks Old Dad. I think my state does have that option for filing once a year only. But I think it will take a year’s worth of quarterly $0 tax filings in order to qualify.
Joe,
I just checked my data, and even though ebay has been collecting for my state since June, I’m seeing zero tax collected for many items. I haven’t looked at it long enough to figure out if there’s any rhyme or reason to it. But then again, for out of state purchases, I don’t know what the sales tax rates and rules/exceptions are. Certainly within the state, the rates are different in every county, particularly for clothing, and those in-state sales seem to be done correctly. But why did $75 curtains going out of state to California not get charged tax? We definitely pay sales tax on curtains in-state. So I have no idea what’s going on either. For now, I’m going to take the “bury head in sand” approach.
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