Delcampe Is Officially Run By Morons

Bovine excrement. If that was truly their intent, they would have framed the email COMPLETELY differently.

Can't tell if you're trolling or being sarcastic, because you certainly can't be serious.

Not really true. More than 30 states have adopted marketplace facilitator laws that shift the burden of tax collection to the marketplace facilitator. Delcampe is not protecting YOU.

How does (say) California get the money that ebay or Amazon has held for them?
I think there is a line somewhere in the tax return that says something about internet or mail sales you didn't pay sales tax on.
Seems like we only buy through ebay or Amazon, so just say no.

Don't know - just curious.
pat

The specifics depend on the state, but roughly: at the end of each quarter, a retailer examines the tax collections from each state, and checks if those state's thresholds have been reached. If so, the retailer remits the tax proceeds to said state(s).

Wow! Blaming the customer for their own inadequacies!!

I am not in any of the listed states, but I do pay sales tax on purchases online (so I don't understand why my state isn't listed) and feel this action is not right. Soooo easy for them to change their software to correct this.

Like I said, I am not in an affected state, but I will boycott DelCampe, nonetheless. Perhaps hitting them in their bottom line will force them to do what they should have done long ago. I am not HAPPY about paying sales taxes on all purchases, but it is a fact of life these days. I can't believe they didn't see this coming!

I guess the question here is should a retailer/retail platform that is based entirely outside of the USA be required to collect and remit sales taxes made by American customers or sellers on their website. ebay is of course based in the USA so is subject to US laws, but is it worth the additional bureaucratic costs to a retailer/retail platform not based in the USA to now have to handle tax remittances to several dozen different jurisdictions in another country.

Delcampe did not handle this situation at all well, and they have probably lost most of their US buyers and sellers for good by this action even if they do set up some sort of software system the way ebay has, but at the same time one does have to wonder if the original Supreme Court case really was meant to be applied to retailers completely outside of the USA as well as those within.

The USA is of course odd in that we do not have a national sales tax like most of the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, the sales tax/VAT would be collected by the Customs Departments when packages arrive in the country and levied before delivery. We don't do that in the USA, and we really do not have any good system with which to handle the issue. Basically it would require a complete overhaul of the US Customs Service to monitor all incoming goods and then charge relevant sales tax on the declared value of the goods based on where the product was going. Probably not feasible given the sheer volume of material that enters the USA each day.

But is requiring the retailer/retail platform based outside the USA to do the job that, in most countries is done in the country of destination by customs departments, the best alternative solution? This issue with Delcampe now highlights the question for all overseas retailers as to whether or not dealing with American customers is worth the potential cost of bureaucratic workload to monitor all sales based on state of final destination, and I can see where for many small to medium-size companies, that answer may indeed be NO.

So much for the promised world of smooth, free-flowing trade between nations.

To look at this another way, if the EU suddenly passed a law requiring overseas retailers, including USA-based ones, to start collecting VAT on all sales to citizens of the EU and remitting them to their respective countries every three months (since different EU members have different VAT rates), how many American retailers, especially smaller ones, might decide that selling their goods to EU customers is not really worth the hassle.

The issue is not where the retailer/retail platform is based; rather is it based upon where the transactions are occurring, in this case the USA. The easiest way to hand the problem is to cease doing business in the USA and the headache is avoided.




I am serious. The SCOTUS decision was enormous in that it allowed the states to take action collecting revenue based upon buyer's location alone. Some or most states took that to heart and are doing their best to collect the sales taxes they chose to impose on residents of their state. Selling to such a state's resident creates the "economic nexus" from which sales taxes can be collected.

The outrage needs to be focused on the members of government at the state and local levels. They are who are doing this, not SCOTUS or Delcampe. Now folks such as ebay do not owe the sales taxes, but they have been forced into the position to collect the sales taxes and submit same to the taxing authorities. They, ebay, are helping the sellers comply with the law regarding sales taxes; collecting from the buyers and remitting on behalf of the sellers. And yes, if my willingness is to pay only $100.00 for an item, I do not care how that $100.00 is split. Of course, if 8.25% now goes to the taxman, less goes to the former owner of the item sold.

Seems daft to me. Why not just block those domiciled in the highlighted states from selling?

Another question that needs asking is how much money are we talking about here? Are those states really that hard up or are we looking at officious bureaucracy at it's worst?

With only 27 EU countries, it would be more simple than collecting sales taxes on sales within the USA. And California alone has about 2000 individual sale tax collection regions within the state to which the sales taxes are directed.

But to directly answer your question every business for which sales to the EU are no longer profitable will cease to retail sales there. Likely the loss in the EU will not be noticed.

1 - that is exactly what Delcampe did, but also HAD to block buyers based in those states since sales to the buyers also represents lost sales tax revenue for the states in question. Some states still have access to Delcampe (I have a friend in Florida who still has access, for example, though how long that lasts will be the question since Florida does have a sales tax - one of the reasons Delcampe's actions are so frustrating is that they were done only to selective states, not all)

2 - States in the USA are perpetually short of money for the most part, and are always looking for new sources of revenue - does not matter if they are Republican-dominate or Democratic-dominated, they all seem to be short of money to cover even basic things like education, transportation infrastructure and the like, even with subsidies from the federal government to help them.

Helping is a bit disingenuous. They are doing what is legally required of them. I suppose the end result may be helping but that is not the motivating factor.

Delcampe have been around for a good while now.

If they can't get this sorted out without too many dramas then you'd have to question what's going on in the back office.

I guess this is one of those esoteric questions - if I in the USA buy from a dealer based in Australia who is selling on a retail platform based in Belgium, where is the transaction happening. In the end the state tax authorities are saying that that the transaction in happening where the buyer lives (which means they get the tax on the sale), but since the states don't have the infrastructure to collect the taxes properly (states don't have their own customs departments, and the Federal Customs Service would need to be completely reorganized to do what the states would need them to do to get their tax revenues properly), the states are now trying to require the platforms or the retailers to collect it for the states even they they are outside the USA.

Well the California estimate in December of 2018 was just under $2,000,000,000.00, two billion dollars on internet sales if taxed. That amount today is much larger.