why are they charging a higher taxes and duty when buying 6 vs 8 plates from seller

[girlytoo]

I was buying 8 plates from a US seller and when I paid it showed the pst gst and duties I was paying. As it turn out the seller only had only 6 plates left to sell which she reversed my money and did adjusted the price. As I was paying for these 6 plates for less money of course, the pst and gst and the duties each were a lot higher then the 8 plate transaction. I ask the person if she would look into it but said she didn't know anything about taxes and duties. I assume Ebay looks after it. I can't remember the amounts but the pst was over 12% and the pst was over 7%and the duties was high also.  I tried looking into it myself through ebay with no luck at all. Hard to find real help here kept going in circles. I even went on ebay chat, waste of time it was a bot that only answered certain question and no person to help. I did bump into a phone number but already wasted over a hour looking for help on line and didn't feel like being put on hold. Of course I didn't buy the plates. They were expense to begin with the taxes and duties being wrong I didn't feel like over paying the duties and the taxes. I was wondering why this happened to begin with? It makes me not want to buys things here. Anyone know who you contact for this mistake in the future since ebay help doesn't seem to help that much? - Thanks

[marnotom!]

Is the actual amount charged correct, though?

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at a US listing for an item forwarded through eBay International Shipping that had three different surcharges on it, but when I did the number-crunching, the amount did work out to 12% tax (5% GST, 7% HST) anyway.

This page may help you with the duty side of things:

https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/dte-acl/est-cal-eng.html

[girlytoo]

Great link for the prices but didn't answer my question. She was going to charge me more for 6 plates at a lower price than 8 plates. But she was charging more Taxes for 6 plates than I would be paying for 8 Plates. I brought it to her attension and she said she knows anything about the taxes. Ebay does the calulations and I was wondering why I would be paying more for less. 

[reallynicestamps]

EBay does calculate the sales taxes for some 100+ governments that sellers deal with. They collect and remit the tax and charge the seller a service fee equal to their service fee on selling and shipping.

It's more complex than that, but as a buyer -- you really don't want more detail.

The seller only deals with their fees, not the tax rates.

It's possible that eBay in the first instance was using a general calculation, but in the second was able to be more precise since they now had your location. Sales taxes are only 5% in Alberta*, but 15% in PEI**.

Our duty free allowance from the USA under the current version of NAFTA is $150 and tax free is $40.

So I doubt duty came into it. Most import fees are actually sales taxes.

* GST only

** 5% GST plus 10% provincial tax.

[marnotom!]

---

@girlytoo wrote:

Great link for the prices but didn't answer my question. She was going to charge me more for 6 plates at a lower price than 8 plates. But she was charging more Taxes for 6 plates than I would be paying for 8 Plates. I brought it to her attension and she said she knows anything about the taxes. Ebay does the calulations and I was wondering why I would be paying more for less. 

---

I asked you if the calculation of the taxes made sense because I was hoping that I'd be able to follow-up with a semi-educated guess about what was going on here, @girlytoo.  We don't really have a lot of information to work with, otherwise.

Having said that, @reallynicestamps has some good general information that may help.  Another thing to take into consideration with the fact that the tax calculations may have been based on two different locations (provinces) is that eBay's International Shipping program also seems to calculate taxes on the shipping price, so part of that tax difference may be due to different calculations on shipping.

As noted earlier, the seller has nothing to do with the tax calculation.

[girlytoo]

I doesn't really matter now it's over and done with now. I know doesn't need to figure any of that out. Someone made a mistake somewhere. You don't pay more money for less. Something was out. Either the person punched in something different or ebay had a hicup. You don't pay hst and pst it doesn't work that way. Maybe it was charged but it would be wrong. I'm not going to worry about it. Just keep my eyes open for this in the future. Thanks though 🙂

[marnotom!]

---

@girlytoo wrote:

You don't pay hst and pst it doesn't work that way.

---

Good catch.  That was a typo on my part.  I'm in BC, so I should have been referring to 7% PST to go with the 5% GST.