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If eBay were to "spin off" PayPal (and it's been speculated on for years) eBay would probably still be the majority shareholder or at least the single biggest shareholder.
I don't think eBay sellers would see any significant change. Fees on payments are very unlikely to change, if anything they might possibly go down if eBay allowed any additional payment services. Fees for selling on eBay might change because a huge portion of eBay Inc's profit come from PayPal and eBay, the marketplace, might need to make up for that.
In any event this is nothing more than speculation and may simply be a rumour spread by someone looking to get a bump in eBay's stock price (which they got yesterday when the story surfaced) before dumping their holdings (Carl Icahn being the primary suspect).
Often, business or government loft trial balloons to gauge interest. eBay could have floated this from an "un-named source" just to see what would be said or happen.
"Anyone have any ideas what impact this might have on the current structure as a seller?"
I do not expect it to happen any time soon. Speculation - that is all it is.
However, to answer your question, we have to go back fourteen years when eBay owned Billpoint, a payment service competing with PayPal. eventually eBay purchased PayPal and wrote off Billpoint (a quarter of a billion US dollars).
Should eBay sell or give to its shareholders some or most of PayPal, as "resped" indicated, fees at eBay would go up to make up for whatever profit eBay Inc is not getting from PayPal, by far its fastest growing profit centre.
Other than that, business as usual.
The so-called "PayPal postage" is managed by Pitney Bowes, both in Canada and the USA. There is no reason to believe that would change as such program is a WIN WIN WIN for everyone using it.
Doing a "spin-off" is almost always some sort of attempt to "unlock shareholder value". It generally comes in two flavours, the first being a situation like eBay where both "sides" are doing ok but it is thought that as two separate companies the total of the two stocks will be higher than if kept as a single entity. The other situation is when a company has a loser division which is a drag on the stock value of the company, dumping off the loser should make the primary company look better and give a bump to the stock price.
A "spin-off" is different from simply selling off a portion of your business (McCain's pizza business for a recent example) because usually a majority holding is retained by the original.
A classic Canadian spin-off was the BCE / Nortel situation, some people (insiders) made a ton of money on that one while retail investors caught up in the excitement eventually lost everything.
The first rumours of a PayPal spin-off date back to the early days of JD back in 2008/2009.
"Who will buy Paypal?"
A spin-off does not mean a sale to someone else. It could be an arrangement similar to BCE giving its shareholders shares in Nortel fourteen years ago.
"Now that I am old and careful, I only buy stocks in companies that make a profit and distribute the profit to the shareholders"
Welcome to the club, sister!
"why hasn't eBay ever paid dividends,"
Where is the money? Where are the profits kept?
Many large American companies doing business around the world maximize their profits in foreign lands where the tax rate is lower. However, that prevents them from paying dividends since the money has not come back to Head Office in the USA. To repatriate the money would require large payment of taxes to the US government.
Take a look at their balance sheet (as of December 2013)
https://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=EBAY+Balance+Sheet&annual
$9 billion in cash and short term investment
BUT the same
$9 billion in short/long term debt
One of their largest asset is "goodwill" (again $9 billion)
Looks good on the balance sheet but cannot be distributed as cash to shareholders.
What is goodwill? In the case of eBay it represents the cost of PayPal shares they purchased over ten years ago in excess of their actual book value. It is valuable since PayPal produces a lot of profit but... it is "paper money", not cash available for dividends.
" no issued preferred shares."
You find very few preferred shares in the USA as they have no tax advantage.
Preferred shares are issued by Canadian companies who want to raise capital but do not want to dilute the voting rights and profit participation of common shareholders. The big advantage for many investors is that preferred shares generally pay a fixed and higher dividend as the common shares and often carry less risk.
Also, dividends received preferred tax treatment. For example, Ontarians earning less than $45000 annually would pay no tax on "eligible" dividends of Canadian corporation. Much better than interest on term deposits from the bank which are fully taxable.
For a recent and comprehensive report of preferred shares issued by Canadian corporations:
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