Um afraid US state sales tax automation may depend upon whether or not you've actually enabled eBay to collect local state sales tax itself from your in-state bidders when you've set up your seller account. If you had hurray, they should break it down and give you evidence somewhere you just need a bit of help from ebay to find. If you don't see the tax money leaving it simply may not be paid invisibly from out of your other fees. For example, I say this because I intentionally didn't enable that ebay option when I set up my sellers account, I pay Connecticut directly. Also separately had to pay ebay it's own various fees for strictly it's own benefit.
Why would ebay do that??? Well ebay anticipates that fictionalebayseller01 user who hawks ribbons online may also operate an actual hair salon on the side for a day job and not want to pay taxes again separately for the same time period so at least when I sold on ebay, ebay allowed you not to enable the tax-collection function and to instead worry about city and state taxes yourself as a seller not to mention on your federal too. As I also did some yardsales for instance, easier for me to only pay once the sales taxes directly than pay ebay to pay CT all over again. You see it makes even more sense than 'free shipping' that taxes are inevitable for seller at least when you consider that officially eBay has no power to make rules of state taxation so payments ebay made on behalf of your business to your state should be traceable as in they owe yourself proof of.
Enforcement is historically lax however. In-state sales taxes plus any local or cross town sales tax used to be as complicated as it could get for virtual business but it gets moreso lately.
Aside from the in-state tax sales tax collection responsibilities the business world had until last year gotten used to... there was a ruling last June by the Supreme Court of the United States against online retail giant Wayfair that has made chaos even for the professionals concerning taxes online from get this OTHER states... just a heads up the tax laws are really changing so that as of last June even if your presence is all virtual it's suddenly very up in the air about what the impact will be upon for example some online activity with over 200 transactions (I really want to know if that includes intangible downloaded products because that's make or break ) per this or that state?
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/10/18/the-wayfair-ruling-evolving-sales-tax-laws-and-sleeper-states/ I know groan... I think most small business don't like tax surprises though they can be worse than the taxes themselves... unfortunately it's apparently uncharted waters for now. I wouldn't trust eBay is ever as invested in the welfare of my business as I am so.
I got frustrated with frequent ebay-driven changes on ebay and have chose not to sell on last year, so can't tell people here if the taxes some are complaining are what strange?/new? are due to Wayfair vs SD or due to something else entirely but from what I'm reading not sure anyone is caught up to Wayfair vs SD as individual states have a lot of power to negotiate their own tax and licensing requirements which historically is slow and mutable. It may be like jaywalking for instance and maybe Colorado requires a license
https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/sites/default/files/NewsRelease_Taxation_OutOfStateRetailers_9.11.18.pdf to sell 201 digital downloads of a pattern to people in Denver that they may or may not ever enforce... for new things... its like time will tell y'know to whom such vague-worded instruction will in practice apply. So luck to all us involved in our self employment adventures.
Ok well, Colorado at least thankfully does not require for intangibles, still, wonder may be more trouble than it's worth if you are selling postcards?That's self-employment for you once you
you still have some more to
. I so do not want to read tutorial programs from all fifty states... so I'm hoping it becomes easier in time.