Tax being charged to USA buyers

[tentrees123]

Hi,

I am an Australian seller on eBay. In the past week I have noticed that my international buyers (USA) have been chased GST on purchases made from me. It shows on the eBay record of the transaction and is collected by PayPal. What has changed, why is this happening?

And why is PayPal calculating my fees on the tax included total!!

Thank you for your help.

EDITED:

GST may be incorrect, now I am only seeing it called 'Tax' - hoping it is just sales tax as applies to the individual USA State that the buyer lives in. Etsy has been collecting this tax for some time, I just have not seen it happening with eBay

[parksfamilyx4]

Just talked to customer service, they are aware sellers are unhappy about having to pay the extra fee, but they don't have a solution yet. We may just have to eat more in fees. I'm definitely going to keep track of it separately!

[tentrees123]

There is a solution- separate the two amounts - they already do it for the Australian buyer being charged GST (goods and services tax) on international transactions. For example when I purchase international goods from ebay I pay the GST included price - lets say its $111 - but when I look at my PayPal account there are two separate payments recorded - $100 to the seller and $11 to ebay (which is the 11% GST they are collecting). No reason PayPal can't do the same for this situation.

[rogerboy]

I have no idea how the tax on my ebay sales to USA buyers, which stupidly has been paid to ME instead of the buyer's state government, gets to end up going to the buyer's state government.

My horrible paypal fees include this tax amount.  If someone drags the tax money out of my account at some later time then the fees taken by PayPal on these tax amounts is fraud .  Fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain

[tentrees123]

I think you'll find that PayPal have already taken the tax amount out of your payment. Have a close look at the details. Would love to know how many $ PayPal is gaining overall from including the tax in our payment received and charging our fees based on this tax included amount - it's fraud alright 😡