Delcampe Is Officially Run By Morons

I'm in New York and so far have been safe, but a friend in Illinois has their account completely locked up.

What's also horrible as my friend said, even the data from listings is locked up. They cannot even access their own listing information if they want to transfer it elsewhere. I'm going to find a way to download all that info before my account is locked up if New York is taken as well at some point.

This explains why I got three emails this morning that three of my buyer's accounts were suspended and they were all in the U.S. Luckily, two of the buyers already paid and I shipped their orders.

No reason to list U.S. material at all on Delcampe.

The USA have a tendency to apply laws outside their own borders. But if Delcampe has no presence in the USA, there might be an issue with an EU company collecting taxes for a non-EU state if there is no treaty that arranges this.

Another reason might be they just do not have the people to deal with this.

ebay does not seem to have any problem doing this (or Amazon). Not sure how the money collected by individual sellers get back to the states.
pat

ebay and Amazon not only have a presence in the USA, they are American companies. But they may run into problems when this would involve sharing 'privacy sensitive' data of EU citizens with American states.

eCommerceBytes has an article about this now:

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2023...liance-risk/

I've talked to my friend who runs The Post Road Co as they sell on Delcampe too. They are in Illinois and completely locked out. They can't access their listings data even if they want to move it to another selling website.

The fact is that US states should not be collecting tax from purchases that have been made from entities outside the US. It's entirely illogical. The way to deal with such purchases is via import duty. Why would an overseas organisation that probably has relatively few US sales - as I presume is the case for Delcampe - bother? I presume the precipitate nature of the change reflected the fact that it had just realised that it was gettimg close to a trigger point.

I'm rather surprised that, given its protectionist nature, this sales tax collection hasn't been raised in the WTO.

There are fairly simple ways to work around this if a person/company was motivated enough with the understanding they would be breaking US tax laws.

But keep in mind that those new 75,000 IRS agents will be keeping themselves busy.
Don

That's... not how the US system works, at all. US policy makes it entirely incumbent upon the importer to know whether purchased goods are subject to import duty. Everything, strictly speaking, is subject to seizure by Customs & Border Patrol (official policy is caveat emptor). But, given the sheer volume of goods that make their way into the US every day, actual policing of everything is impossible. Hence, the ability of US buyers to buy from overseas and have things mailed to them, almost always without issue.
Sales and use taxes are a state matter, not a Federal one. Every jurisdiction (state, county, city) may or may not impose its own tax, and at varying rates. It's up to buyers and sellers to report and remit the appropriate sales/use tax to the buyer's state taxing authority.
Those outside the USA may see this, as you allude, as a "US sales" thing; it's not. Delcampe (or anyone) isn't selling to a buyer in the USA, they're selling to a buyer in California, or Illinois, or Georgia, or New York, etc.

A sucky decision and very poor handling by Delcampe - without giving any sellers/buyers prior notice. 10% of my Delcampe customers are in the US, so as of now a significant percentage of them are locked out. Certainly an argument to sell on multiple platforms, so one doesn't become too dependent on any one of them.

As far as I recall from my days dealing with trade policy, federal governments can't hide behind state practice in the application of trade rules, hence my reference to the WTO, given that this practice represents a barrier to trade.

That ship has sailed. GATT Article 3 allows US state taxes (and all other "internal taxes" of a WTO member state or its political units) as long as they are not applied to discriminate against imports, that is, they do not act toward domestic protectionism. The WTO and the GATT contracting parties likely recognized at the time of the GATT negotiations that returning the state tax cow to the barn was not going to happen.

Did you all miss the part I highlighted above? They have indicated that they wish to adapt to the current laws.

Gosh folks are upset. This is fantastic Customer Service as it stops you the seller or the buyer from violating local sales tax and use tax compliance laws. Sellers are responsible for paying sales taxes on internet sales to the state which tax such sales. The tax is based upon the cost of the item(s) being delivered into the taxing agency location no matter where in the world the sale originates.

Now as the implementation is moving along, the big fish were served up first, Amazon, ebay and similar huge companies; next the middle-sized fish and eventually the minnows will be brought into compliance.





Again, this was fantastic Customer Service to protect all involved.




There are only two ways to claim no knowledge of the impact. First you live under a rock without access to news of the USA for the last several years; and, second, you purposely disregarded the widely and repeatedly disseminated news of the changes in taxation of internet sales within the USA. The locking of accounts until tax compliance is a worthy and noble action protecting both you and Delcampe and costing Delcampe income. The buyers and sellers still have their material and can sell via other methods until Delcampe believes they are in compliance with the with the current state of the law.


Some big states are not mentioned which, to me means Delcampe may have had enough transactions in the areas to be compliant. Also one state listed, Nevada is not collecting sales taxes on internet sales since the SCOTUS ruling even though the state does collect sales taxes on sales in Nevada and with businesses have a physical present in the state if a mail or electronic purchase order is made.

Additionally due to what I consider the spotty nature of the US States List, there may be other compliance issues besides the sale tax collection. Specifically Delcampe may be considered as a payment processor now required to be compliant with the USA Federal 1099-K Forms and any state level required reporting requirements.

Lastly here is how sales tax in California is determined. First a state wide tax to which is added, regional (more than one county) tax such as the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) regional sales tax, then single county taxes, and lastly single city taxes. For California the sales tax rates range from 7.25% to 10.75% with internet sales tax being collected at the sales tax rate of the physical address of the customer.

Delcampe has added the following warning on it's Suspending and Closing Accounts page:

Or at least platforms which ARE compliant with the current state of the law. That means ebay, Amazon and perhaps others, but NOT Delcampe nor HIP.

By the way I still believe the APS will get some tail feathers pulled by hitching to non-compliant HIP and if the APS does not send out 1099-K forms on all the money collected and paid out to APS store participants.

Anyone with seven figures to burn know a Belgian attorney?