Post by PickyChicky on Jun 24, 2020 7:19:47 GMT -6
I posted this over on ECB's boards in response to part of the discussion regarding the June 16h article about eBay's Managed Payments. I'm copying it here because I'm truly interested in y'all's thoughts on the matter as I'm considering it in my "letter" to lawmakers...
What is the true definition of a 'sale'? What part of a transaction should actually be considered a sale? We're not selling shipping; we're only charging them what it costs for us to ship. The USPS (or whoever) is selling ME the shipping, but I don't pay additional sales tax on it.
So, essentially, the USPS is the one selling the shipping and the merchant is only selling their merchandise. So, how is it that these sites (or the states, for that matter) think they can legally charge sales tax on shipping? Especially when you consider that is has ALWAYS been a known law that you cannot profit from USPS postage? If you're selling postage FOR the USPS, it must be at cost.
That raises a whole other question about flat rate shipping and whether or not the customer knows what service they're paying for. I'm not going down that road, at the moment, though, as I'm just trying to get at the root of this sales tax thing -- and the marketplace and even payment processing fees assessed on postage and sales tax.
It would seem someone or several someones are committing fraud -- and the scariest part is that many of our own states are among the culprits.
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