Netflix tax

[stickerswa]

Just got an email from ebay...

From 1 July 2017, Goods and Services Tax (GST) will apply to fees on eBay.com.au, due to new legislation in Australia (the "Netflix Tax").

Businesses registered for GST will not be affected by this change if you register your Australian Business Number (ABN) with eBay here.

Anyone else feel a fee increase coming to cover this....

[digital*ghost]

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@thereallygoodbookshopcomau wrote:

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I believe you have to make your ebay account into a Business account before you can put your ABN in.

My account is a business account but I still have this same issue. I don't think I am the only one. 

For businesses registered for GST like mine I claim an input tax credit on my BAS for any gst eBay charges me from 1 July on just like any other taxable supply I suppose.

I don't quite understand why ebay are allowing GST registered businesses an exemption like this as I imagine at GST return time GST will be payable on the fees anyway as the fees aren't GST-free. In other words if you don't pay it on your monthly eBay statement then it will be payable at BAS time anyway.

Has anybody actually spoken to their accountant about it.  Sorry if someone has posted and I have missed it.

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If you can claim the GST paid to eBay as input credit, it's effectively the same as eBay not charging it at all - that's why an exemption can be made for GST registered businesses. 

i.e. If you pay it via eBay, it comes off your total payable when you do BAS, so there's no reason for it be added instead if you don't pay it via eBay.  

eBay are apparently claiming that as long as no spaces are entered when adding the ABN, no error messages should be returned, but I haven't tried adding mine as I'm not currently registered to collect GST.

[digital*ghost]

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I believe you have to make your ebay account into a Business account before you can put your ABN in.

My account is a business account but I still have this same issue. I don't think I am the only one. 

For businesses registered for GST like mine I claim an input tax credit on my BAS for any gst eBay charges me from 1 July on just like any other taxable supply I suppose.

I don't quite understand why ebay are allowing GST registered businesses an exemption like this as I imagine at GST return time GST will be payable on the fees anyway as the fees aren't GST-free. In other words if you don't pay it on your monthly eBay statement then it will be payable at BAS time anyway.

Has anybody actually spoken to their accountant about it.  Sorry if someone has posted and I have missed it.

[lillytees]

I'm with you. Seems like a different fee each month. EBay own Gumtree & PayPal so avoiding both of them would be a must. With Australia post charging an extraordinary amount for post, is there any reason to sell on these sites. Hello Facebook selling. No fees, local pick up.

[character_parties_aus]

Other than the GST which can be claimed back by GST registered sellers are there any fee increases?

I couldnt see anything obvious looking at the PDF link kindly made by one person.

However in true eBay style ( one thing that certainly never changes) it was barely legibile as it was clearly therefore important! I always concern myself with a fee increase buried in tax confusion when it comes to eBay.

[jfmgray]

The way I read eBay's new fee table, the GST is only being applied to FVFs - including FVF for postage.  It does not seem to be applied to listing fees, store fees and eBay postage labes.

[lyndal1838]

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@lillytees wrote:
I'm with you. Seems like a different fee each month. EBay own Gumtree & PayPal so avoiding both of them would be a must. With Australia post charging an extraordinary amount for post, is there any reason to sell on these sites. Hello Facebook selling. No fees, local pick up.

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Ebay does not own paypal any longer.

It is not an ebay fee but an Australian Government fee.

Facebook selling = no fees, local pickup and a lot less exposure to to buyers than on ebay.

[davewil1964]

Less than 5% of my sales are local, so hardly a viable option for me. Or many others, I suspect.

[ozstockman]

That ebay registration page is a  bad made thing because they are asking for a GST registration number that does not exist.

First I spent 30 minutes on a phone with ATO just to figure out that GST registration numbers  do not exist. They are asking for GST registration number and Australian bussinesses do not have any registration number for GST. That's what I was told by ATO. Entering a seller's ABN does not work and ebay throws an error "User's country does not match VAT/GST/OGRN prefix." I am a registered seller in Australia and I have chosen AU. how is it possible it does not match?

After ATO I called ebay and what I have heard is more ridiculous. I was told that they have had a lot of calls about that page and then I was told that the support person I was talking to is going to submit a report to fix it and I would need to try this page later today.. Why on earth they are reporting this problem to their tech team only now if they have received a lot of calls about it already.

That page sitting there for at least 10 days, some participants of this discussion mentioned a week ago that that page does not accept their ABNs. So what ebay have been doing all this time? It seems they have done nothing at all.

And they keep sending emails about that Netflix tax and pointing to that bad page. I have received one today again.

I suggest everybody here who cannot complete this registration page should call eBay and tell them to fix it asap or at least stop wasting everybody's time sending them emails and asking to go and register on that page.

I have not signed to be a tester for ebay but somehow we are sellers and buyers all testing their new feautures all the time and finding some bugs in them and still paying them fees for their buggy pages. I would accept that if they were fixing them after they recieve reports about them but it is not happening at all.

[bluebudgies]

I doubt most people would want to wait around all day for a potential buyer to turn up for a $5 book either, or to give out their address to every Tom, Dick & Harry. FB is good for stuff that can be posted but I doubt I'd use it much for pick-up.

[thereallygoodbookshop]

Sorry Digital-Ghost, it's not really as simple as ebay not charging it at all.  This is as simple as I can explain it.  For BAS we total up total of our sales that include GST (everything that we sell within Australia) and that gets divided 1/11th gives us the GST we collected. But GST-free sales and export sales are separate as they don't have GST of course.  Then we add up all the GST we paid on our purchases (which will include the ebay fees) and we take that amount away from the GST we have collected giving us a total of what we owe the Tax Office.

So by the time the end consumer buys a retail product they pay 10 percent GST total.  All the businesses along the way pay GST too but they claim the portion they paid back and essentially only pay GST on their added on margin at BAS time for want of a better term.

This is where I get confused, because if a GST registered business claims an exemption from ebay for the GST on the fees, how will that be accounted for at BAS time as you haven't paid for it on your 'purchases' etc but I cannot see that any business is actually exempt from being charged the GST on these fees now unless they are based overseas. 

Is the GST business registration only applicable to businesses not based in Australia but sell on eBay Australia?  That might be why we cannot register with an Australian ABN.  Just sayin....

[bluebudgies]

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@jfmgray wrote:

The way I read eBay's new fee table, the GST is only being applied to FVFs - including FVF for postage.  It does not seem to be applied to listing fees, store fees and eBay postage labes.

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If you read the new rate table again you'll see that in the headings down the left side it says the private seller fees are GST inclusive, but the business seller fees are GST exclusive, ie. GST will be added on to the fees in the table.  They'll have done it that way because businesses can be exempted if they're registered for GST.  They've called all the store packages Business Sellers.

I don't know how much insertion fees currently are when you've already used your free listing entitlements but the new rates show as $1.65 and $3.85 so I'd say they're currently $1.50 and $3.50, which means GST has been added to listing fees for non-store sellers.  

I can't see anything about postage labels but they're not really an ebay fee - they're just collecting the money on behalf of AP.