Prior to March 22, 2024 the state of Wisconsin taxed coins and bullion. So, when purchasing coins on eBay, state sales tax was added to my invoices. Yesterday I won a coin in an eBay auction and the invoice had Wisconsin sales tax added to the total. Today I contacted eBay about this and they told me to pay the invoice as is and they'd apply a refund to the CC I used for the purchase. They also told me that I wouldn't have been charged state sales tax if the seller properly used the correct category for listing their coins and bullion. Since I never sold anything on eBay I am not familiar with the different categories. Anyhow, I wonder how many of you have run into this issue?
I would bet that the seller did nothing wrong and eBay just hasn't updated their software yet to account for the new law.
I would second this. It will take eBay a while to get things fixed based on the experience I had in Illinois (was around a month before the tax stopped and some categories are still occasionally improperly taxed). I have heard people being successful in getting a refund from eBay but you usually have to be persistent and talk to the right people. Depending on how high the amount of the tax is will guide how much effort you want to expand (my biggest one was under $20 so I did not take it up with eBay after the first attempt failed).
I'm from WI also and the same thing happened to me yesterday. The seller said it is Ebay that takes out taxes and therefore are the ones to talk to. I sent messages out tonight, let you know what they said. Regards, Sting.
Last night I was about to buy a coin from a seller in Canada and just before I hit "Pay" I noticed a 10% sales tax applied. My state, Illinois, has never taxed coins so this is a mistake. I checked and it was listed in the correct category. I decided not to buy it because this would add maybe $13 to the price, but I'm really annoyed because otherwise it's a good deal and there's nothing else out there for a similar price. I know the seller can't do anything about it. I wonder if the fact that it's from Canada affects it for some reason? But in the same night I purchased a token from a Canadian seller and was not charged sales tax.
It could be some word in the title or description. Normally tokens are taxed and I have had the tax applied by eBay if the word token was in the title. There are other words that trigger the tax that I don't recall (I do remember testing out several items in the same supposedly non-taxable category and several were hit with tax while others were not-all US coins from US sellers).
That's interesting. Looking at this one, the only thing I can figure that maybe would trigger it is the word "silver" but it seems like I've certainly bought silver coins before without trouble.
