Warning! if you use eBay prepaid labelling

[painbalm]

Anyone who claims the GST on their postage will be paying more if printing out the postage labels in eBay.  Australia Post pricing includes GST.  I claim back 10% of my postage account with Australia Post for the GST component.  Any seller who does a GST return would be stupid to print out the eBay labelling when there is no GST invoice supplied  by eBay thus effectively paying 10% more for postage. 

[phorum_junkie*]

The cost of the postage if you are using the ebay service is less so it really makes little difference IMO.

[curraone]

6. Can I get a tax invoice for my postage labels?

Tax invoices are available five days after labels are printed (once the option to cancel has expired). You can access your tax invoice through the Manage postage labels page in My eBay.  

No tax invoice is issued if a label is cancelled (because you receive a refund).

http://sellercentre.ebay.com.au/postage-and-shipping/australia-post-labels#promotion

[painbalm]

How would you determine that it makes little difference?  A 500gram satchel or box is currently $7.15 on eBay and $7.20 at the post office.  I pay Australia Post $6.55 GST exempt for the same postage which is around .65 cents less than the $7.15 eBay are offering.  Whilst eBay are offering for a limited time a refund discount and only on certain postage it will not last forever and is for a limited time to act as a sweetener to lure sellers into using their service.  Any seller that has a postage account or can claim the GST component of their postage bill is better off not using eBay labels .  Australia Post charges GST on postage but naturally as eBay does not pay GST sellers cannot claim the GST component of their postage as eBay will not and cannot provide a GST tax invoice for postage fees paid.

Of course small sellers who do not lodge GST returns may benefit a little but my point was to alert the sellers who would usually claim GST back on their postage.

[davewil1964]

Read what curraone posted.

[misterforgetfulsbooks]

if ebay doesn't charge GST on their fees, does that mean we can't claim GST back on them?

[lane-ends]

I'd claim it whether you kept an official tax invoice or not. You have proof you paid AP, ATO are not going to argue that there was no gst included in this. GST receipts are really only essential when dealing with suppiers who it is uncertain whether they charged GST or not. Even in those cases if I remember you can claim a tax input credit, effectively the same thing (I'm no longer registered for GST so it may be different now)

[bsignd]

You can only claim the gst when you can produce a valid tax invoice.  You have always only been able to claim the gst back on items on which you have been charged the gst.  A lot of sellers are not registered for gst and therefore do not charge it.  so you cannot claim gst on that purchase under any circumstances.  The ATO can and will argue about any claims for GST input credit claimed without a legitimate tax invoice to back up that claim.

I may buy many business items off ebay for use in my business, but if i buy from a GST non-registered seller, I cannot claim the gst on those items.

[davewil1964]

You only have to have a tax invoice for amounts of $82.50 and above.

$7ish postage payments therefore do not require one. Plus if you read what curraone wrote in about post 3, you would see that tax invoices for postage are available. Individually.

If you CAN't claim a GST input, you can still claim a tax deduction.

[spicy-pickles]

Ah is this for real? So I now have to go back though all my sales and print out each tax invoice? What a crock. This doesn't even make any sense.

So postage is being applied to my eBay monthly invoice and billed by them. However I have a bunch of individual Tax Invoices from Aust Post, even though I never actually made a payment directly to them?

Here I was thinking that eBay would total up the postage and show the GST component for that on their invoice.

The stupid eBay system wouldn't even let me print a label just now because it said the buyers postcode and suburb didn't match. The Aust Post website said it was correct, and in the end I had to pay more and do it via C&S which didn't complain and happily confirmed the postcode was correct and generated a label.

I wish I could just do it all via the C&S site like I used to.