Delcampe Is Officially Run By Morons

Just received the email below from Delcampe. So stupid that I initially suspected hacking, but when I went externally to Delcampe and logged in, my account has in fact been terminated, with the message "Your account has been closed due to your noncompliance with our Terms and Conditions."

**MY** noncompliance???? Eff all the way off, you incompetent douchenozzles.

Not that I made that many Delcampe purchases, but Dalcampe's not wanting or knowing how to collect sales tax in the U.S. and instead banning entire groups of users reinforces my contention that they are just Hipstamp on an international scale: overfunded idiots.

"Risks of non-compliance" does not seem to bother Hip at all. Still waiting for that shoe to drop however given the need for lots more tax revenue.

Delcampe took an interesting approach. Insert head in dark place and wait for problem to disappear while putting customers in time-out. Huh?

Interesting they tell you you are not compliant when the actual reason appears to be they expect they cannot provide a service that complies with local legislation.

ebay UK will apply sales taxes on sales to the US, but presumably it's not worth the candle for Delcampe.

No great loss to me - was considering dropping account anyway. Apparently if I lived in Alabama I would be just fine. Just another F%$#@& up thing in todays world.

I got this too

At first I thought this was a spam email, but it's true - I tried to log into my Delcampe account and it has, for the time being, been closed.

I'm gutted - Delcampe is my preferred platform for purchasing stamps, and now thanks to a bunch of f*cktwit money-hungry politicians, I am cut off completely from being able to purchase from Delcampe, at least directly.

For those not familiar with the Supreme court case, one can read full details here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South...Wayfair,_Inc.

But the jist of it is that the burden is upon the online marketplaces to collect taxes due to the states. It appears that Delcampe's sales to the USA have now reached the threshold where they are now being told they must collect and remit state taxes made on purchases from people in the affected states.

Considering Delcampe is based in Europe, not the USA, I can not not say that I blame them for deciding that the amount of sales from the USA are not significant enough to bother with dealing with such bureaucracy, and instead have decided to not make the platform available to Americans in those states that have set up systems to demand taxes be remitted (and I, in Ohio, live in one of them).

But, this definitely puts a bit of a spammer on me building my collection, especially for Continental European and Continental European Colonial material. :(

I was never a seller on Delcampe either, so it's clear that the issue here is the states requiring Delcampe to handle the tax issue

What I find interesting though it is that this is only affecting users of Delcampe in certain states, not all.

New York, California, Illinois, Texas, Florida all still can purchase from Delcampe it appears...as can small states like Idaho, North Dakota and Delaware.

Troubling news for those affected...

On the other hand, I seem to recall numerous threads here on SCF concerning this very issue (non-collection of sales tax) - some of them several years old.

Should anyone be surprised at this development?

Should anyone be surprised when other, smaller venues are forced to take similar measures?

Apparently, there simply is no way to escape the tax man in the digital age.

John

As Dan mentioned, HipStamp better be near completion with their support on this...
If I was someone (seller or APS) who has hooked their wagon to HS, I would be pressing them on the plan and the status of their support on the State tax requirements.
Don

As does DJCMHOH, I find it interesting that not all states with sales taxes are on the list. So for now, living in Pennsylvania, I can still log in and order.

In my case, this would present an impediment to collect France, and make it a real pain to get European autogiro material....
Maybe I had best get orders in now before someone wakes up at Delcampe or the business volume reaches some magic threshold.

Delaware, btw, is not on the list because they have no sales tax.
Same with Alaska, Oregon, Montana, and New Hampshire.

Taxing online transactions was (and is) inevitable. As more and more transactions moved away from 'in-real-life', it seems obvious that the politicians (local, state, federal) would seek to replace the impact and any lost revenues. I agree that years ago we posted that the 'online tax vacation' was over. Politicians may not know how to log into Facebook, but they understand how to tax and give themselves the money they need to buy more votes and stay in power.

In my opinion they are not to blame, we are to blame. We get the governments we deserve.
Don

I'm a postcard seller and got this too. What's really messed up, is they locked the entire account. Those in the effected states can not even make purchases.

The fact that they terminated and locked everybody's accounts BEFORE communicating anything to impacted people is dirty IMO. People are locked out from their transaction history, messaging, etc.

Horrific customer service.

Obviously! They don't have a means of collecting state sales tax, so how can you be allowed to buy, if they don't have a mechanism to calculate and collect the tax from you?

I agree, but perhaps they received an enforcement demand from one of the specified states and felt they had to take immediate action. The sad thing is that shopping cart software is readily available to calculate this stuff automatically. Of course, you have to create an account with the tax authority of every state, and have someone do EFTs or wires every month or quarter. They just don't want to incur those costs.

It should be noted that the states in the Delcampe excluded list are those with low annual sales thresholds. For example, Illinois, Ohio, and many of the others require Delcampe to pay state tax if it does only $100,000 in annual transactions in each of those states. Other states that are more business friendly, like the Great State of Texas, have set the threshold at $500,000 per year and Delcampe must be below that even though Texas has one of the largest state populations. So, if you're angry, lobby your legislature to raise the threshold in the interest of allowing smaller businesses to thrive. (But good luck in Illinois, given that it is effectively insolvent.)