Hip Stamp Tax Or No Tax

This week I moved my stamp sales to Hip Stamp. Just looking for confirmation on what I've searched here.
--There is no tax collection by either myself or Hip Stamp - correct??
So far the only down side is starting over with zero feedback. In four days over 60% of my listings (not a lot of listings to start) have multiple bids.

@wheelman

You should be collecting sales tax or paying sales tax in your home state unless your state has no sales tax or an exemption for casual or occasional sellers.

So far, HipStamp has not indicated that they are required to collect sales tax as a market facilitator.

My stamp sales on HipStamp seem to be ready to overtake ebay. The average sale price appears to be higher suggesting that buyers of higher priced stamps are more sensitive to the cost of paying sales tax.

If sellers are paying less on ebay to compensate for sales tax, ebay has found a way to keep revenue up by including sales tax when calculating final value fees. Previously, ebay excluded sales tax.

The collection of online sales tax was not a decision that companies like ebay, Amazon, or Etsy wanted to see or have to deal with; but in June 2018 the Supreme Court's Wayfair v. South Dakota ruling cleared the way for states to require out-of-state merchants to collect and remit local sales tax on goods sold. Congress responded to the Supreme Court's Wayfair ruling by introducing the "Online Sales Simplicity and Small Business Relief Act" which allowed sellers with less than $10 million in online sale to dodge the collection of taxes but like many introduced bills in Washington, this was never finalized.

So by 2019 states began to each figure out how they could start generating state income based upon the Supreme Court 2018 Wayfair ruling. Given the mess of different state taxation laws and collection rates and the nature of interstate online sales; many states sought to simplify the sales tax collection "problem". A number of states implemented 'marketplace facilitator sales tax laws' which placed the burden on companies like ebay, Amazon, or Etsy to collect the sales tax. These companies certainly did not want the extra cost of complying by these new state laws but they had no choice; the states were going to get their 'piece of the action'.

Some states quickly enacted new marketplace facilitator sales tax laws and the larger companies like Amazon and ebay had to react quickly since they had presence in many of these states. HipStamp is located in my state of North Carolina and NC was slow to implement any marketplace facilitator sales tax law but they finally got around to it a few months ago. Starting on 2/1/2020 the new marketplace facilitator sales tax law states that "A remote marketplace facilitator that made or facilitated more than $100,000 in gross sales or 200 transactions in the state in the previous or current calendar year is required to obtain certificate of registration, collect sales tax, file returns, and remit tax on all sales into the state. A marketplace and a seller can agree, in writing, to have the seller collect the tax due instead."

HipStamp has to comply with this NC law and either collect the taxes automatically or place a significant burden on sellers to navigate the incredibly complex interstate tax collection requirements themselves. Since I do not sell on HipStamp I am unsure if they now require a written agreement that sellers will collect taxes themselves but to comply with the NC law they will have to have this in place.

Moving to HipStamp does not remove the tax burden nor does it remove the additional time and effort that sellers will have to invest in collecting the taxes. Marketplace facilitators like ebay and Amazon have attempted to make the collection easier by doing it for the sellers (and in some state were required to do it). Since this service costs them more money (in development time, support, and maintenance) it is normal that they would consider passing on these new costs. HipStamp currently 'has the luxury' of passing the burden onto the sellers themselves since they are small and do not have a presence in states which have different laws.

If HipStamp were to grow and start having physical presence in other states, they would no longer 'have the luxury' of passing the tax collection burden on the sellers themselves; many other states do not have the law written like NC. You can read more about state marketplace facilitator laws here
https://www.avalara.com/us/en/learn...or-laws.html

So since the Supreme Court's Wayfair decision, sellers who are doing a significant amount of online sales face the additional cost of tax collection. Whether or not a marketplace facilitator like Amazon, ebay or Hipstamp supports automatic collection of the taxes largely depends upon their size and physical presence in various states. If you have an online store and move to HipStamp you still face the additional cost of collecting state taxes. You can buy and use a app like TaxJar or you can invest your own time and effort in doing it manually. But the Supreme Court's Wayfair decision and state tax laws are going to drive additional cost no matter what the online venue may be.

Sellers without a store or are not doing a lot of online sales are currently still 'under the radar' for most states. It may be that at some point the interstate taxation laws become more highly tuned and it becomes feasible for each state to chase even the small or occasional sellers around. But currently smaller sellers on HipStamp can probably break the law and not collect or report the taxes, does this make HipStamp a better choice?
Don

Thanks for the fantastic clarification. As I am just starting out on HS I will track sold and where shipped on Excel, in case it becomes an issue, and will plan to absorb the tax if it becomes a liability. If things really expand, and becomes my responsibilty, then I will look at something like TaxJar.
Thanks both for the comebacks.
Paul

To be honest, there is hidden gold in online companies that rarely gets mentioned (or complained about); they are building huge data mining vaults which have immense value. Our personal buying/selling data is already being sold by many of them but because this is hidden from view most users are either ignorant or apathic about the selling of their data and purchasing habits. If there was something to be concerned about and to beef about it would be this fact.

We have no idea how these companies might be using our data; but no one can deny that it has incredible value. As an added potential zinger, note that the owner of HipStamps is actually competing with other sellers/buyers (Rosenberg Philatelics https://www.hipstamp.com/store/rose...-philatelics ). Imagine the uproar if ebay had their own philatelic store and was competing with everyone else. Having access to all the bidding information, a buyers history, mailing lists, mining the seller data, etc. is obviously a significant market advantage.

But in any case the real gold mine with these online companies is our data but few here seem to care about this.
Don

" As an added potential zinger, note that the owner of HipStamps is actually competing with other sellers/buyers (Rosenberg Philatelics https://www.hipstamp.com/store/rose...-philatelics ). "

There was a similar issue with Stanley Gibbons selling their own stuff when they owned him.

"the real gold mine with these online companies is our data but few here seem to care about this"

Or none of us have a clue how to prevent this.