Not only does the eBay seller never possess the sales tax, even if they did, that is money that is tax revenue that is collected on behalf of each state's government. It is essentially theft for PayPal to charge the eBay sellers their 2.9% fee on sales taxes that eBay is taking and the seller never actually chargers OR possesses at any point of the sale. PayPal should be charging eBay this 2.9% fee on the sales tax portion, and then eBay can decide whether or not they want come to some arrangement with PayPal to reduce it, or whether eBay wants to try to deduct these PayPal fees from the collected tax money before they pass on to each state. Lawsuits are coming and the bottom line is that two things will eventually change: 1. PayPal is not going to be allowed to charge the eBay sellers their fee on sales taxes that the eBay seller isn't ever charging or collecting and PayPal or eBay will ultimately be required to pay these fees back to each eBay seller, and 2. Etsy, eBay, Amazon and other "marketplace facilitators" are going to end up being required to implement a system that allows each individual marketplace seller to opt out of having an out of state buyer's state's sales taxes auto-collected until the marketplace seller reaches the nexus requirements for each state (usually $100,000 and/or 200 transactions). Bank on it.
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