Hah! Got my sales tax payments back from Ebay

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I collect some silver and although I buy most of it a local coin dealers I have bought numerous items on Ebay. The only ones I buy online are casino silver strikes which are hard to find locally but quite vigorously traded on Ebay. Also, there are no counterfeits to worry about. But several years ago Ebay began collecting sales tax. Ohio, where I live, does not collect sales tax for precious metals.

Eventually I got fed up and decided to ferret my way through the maze that is Ebay customer service. I tried starting in several places but got nowhere. Their customer service is menu driven and no matter what path you take there is no item labeled “How do I get my illegally collected sales tax back?”. I found a post on a Reddit silver forum that stated you need to keep asking for an “agent”. So I did. After simply entering “agent” several times I finally got a different reply. It said I could request that a customer service rep could call me on the phone number listed on my account. So I did.

Lo and behold I got a call within minutes and a pleasant gent asked me what I needed. I explained and, aha, he immediately knew what I meant. He pulled up my account and began selecting silver purchases. There were about 15 purchases going back a year. He added up the total tax and said it might take awhile but I would get a refund. Today I got it, only about 3 weeks later. Ebay did not simply refund the total amount, I got 15 separate deposits, one for each transaction, ranging from $2.60 to $15.

You would think that Ebay would have an option for sellers to check off a box when they are selling bullion so the tax would not get collected in the first place for the states that do not collect it (42 of them). That’s what all the online coin dealers do. And now I wonder what they do with all the tax? I suppose they just send it to the correct state so they are essentially getting a bonus.

2

Good work. I love it when persistence pays off.

3

Of course not. The state isn’t expecting a sales tax payment from those transactions. The ones getting the bonus of your money is eBay.

So double congratulations, for persistence and for foiling one of eBay’s routine little money grabs. And thanks for sharing how you did it.

4

As an online retailer myself, I can tell you that all excess tax collected has to either be refunded to the customer or submitted to the customer’s respective tax authority.

5

Of course I will accept the authority of your experience, at least provisionally (since I don’t know you from Adam). I presume they are relying on eBay for accurate reporting; I wonder how that all works. I wonder how carefully eBay is audited by all 50 state tax authorities, and how hard it would be for them to hide funds that are collected unnecessarily as taxes.

Sorry, I remain cynical about eBay and probably always will, having been scarred by a few experiences.

6

With the amount of money that goes through there I assure you that they are audited.

7

On the state forms (and software) used to submit sales tax, there is a box for excess tax collected and that amount is always added to the amount owed. There are also forms to amend previous submissions for adjustments which would be what eBay had to do to get the money it refunded back from Ohio. A large company like eBay is using software that would have to be hacked to allow those excess taxes to be retained.

8

You both make a persuasive case. I do believe there are circumstances where eBay would not cheat people to line their own pockets, i.e. where they just can’t. This probably qualifies as one of those circumstances.