eBay Orders and GST frustration

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Hi everyone,

Being a both buyer and seller on eBay, as a business registered for GST it is quite strange that eBay has not yet implemented systems for buyers to request a GST invoice, or sellers to send GST invoices (not a standard eBay invoice). Even though we can provide our ABN to eBay, it only seems to be for claiming a GST deduction on seller fees, but I believe it could have a wider usage.

We often buy parts and supplies from other eBay sellers in Australia and I find the only way around this is to message and ask for a GST invoice if they are registered for GST.

Majority of the responses I receive are along the lines of:

1. "We are not a registered business in Australia" (not sure how this happens when they have a large sales turnover. I suspect they are just holding inventory in a 3rd party fullfilment warehouse in Australia)

2. "Please provide your email so we can email you a tax invoice" (This makes me feel like I am in violation of eBay TOS if I provide my email for a legitimate purpose)

3. "We are not registered for GST" (Fair enough, no problems. Although this also seems to happen in conjunction with response 1)

4. It can sometimes take multiple messages to get a response with larger sellers. Unfortunately due to language barriers it can also cause issues on occasion - i.e. I once had a seller inform me they had no legal obligation to provide a tax invoice even though they later told me they were registered for GST.

Amazon has a system in place where you can request a GST tax invoice from the seller, I'm really not sure why eBay has never thought about doing this too. It's a lot of hassle as a small business to chase up invoices so we can claim a GST credit, I often find myself giving up.

The GST credits can, and do add up on a monthly purchase basis, so it is disheartening when we are unable to claim them when otherwise we should have been able to.

I'm not sure if there are other Australian businesses who can also relate, but I thought I would post the message here... who knows, maybe someone will see it.

Thanks for reading, let me know if you have similar thoughts.

[davewil1964]

2. Once you have completed a transaction, providing your personal details to a seller is not a violation of eBay's TOS. Not sure about emails, as they mask them normally. Maybe get the seller to send you the invoice in a message, that way there is definitely no violation of TOS.

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Thanks for the feedback. I was not aware the email would become masked in messages. I've had a few customers here and there occasionally send me their email in a message asking for a tax invoice and it hasn't been masked. I do know however with the most recent privacy changes emails provided in the order are masked.

And yes I agree - asking them to send a picture of the invoice does work (although they cannot upload a PDF, only an image which is fine).