we all might share the sentiment but its not a question she can answer. Ebay only follows CRA directives on matters like this, they are compliant to what the Canadian Govt says it has to do. This question/comment is more appropriate for an accountant, a tax lawyer, an MP, or the Minister of Finance directly (I wrote one once, and while he took 6 months to respond, he did respond, and quite at length too). She or ebay cant answer that question.
As it stands from my own accountant, they got this dropped on them around tax time and no one there knew anything apart from rumours and I still havent heard back from mine as she was going on a fact finding expedition and would contact me once they got some concrete information. God knows when that will be, its not going to be an issue until tax time next year anyways. Really, for those who make over the threshold, it affects us in a number of ways that really only concern who we hire to do our taxes. Folks under the threshold I would recommend calling an accountant later on in the year and asking the following questions, off the top of my head:
- this tax is being collected due to a CRA directive and I make under the 30,000 threshold. How can this happen? (they can explain it to you)
-does it mean I have to remit tax as well from Jan 1 to June 30? (probably not, but when it comes to the CRA and their plans, you never want to make assumptions about their courses of action). If the answer is yes (lets hope not) you will not only have to calculate it but be out of pocket for the entire amount as it will have to be remitted (plus the filing fee if you dont do it yourself, my accountant charges $150 to file GST), so its best to have some savings lying around to cover this amount just in case (Id say around $1000 to be on the safe side).
-this very well means you may be able to claim input tax credits towards reducing the amount of GST you paid (or, more accurately, was paid for you by ebay), which may entitle you to a rebate on the amount ebay remitted on your behalf. In case this happens EVERYONE in this boat needs to save ALL their receipts starting July 1 for EVERYTHING they spend money on related to their business (buying inventory, paying for shipping, buying shipping supplies, gas to drive yourself to the Post Office, etc etc) as every single cent of GST you pay for any service related to what you sell here enables you to a cent for cent writedown on the GST amount collected ( say GST as here in Alberta we have no HST or PST). Example: if $600 in total tax was remitted on your behalf, and you paid a total of $120 in GST for all your business related expenses, you theoretically would be entitled to a rebate of $120 as you would only owe $480 in tax. I say this in theory as CRA/Govt of Canada have created a giant can of worms by doing this mid year and collecting on behalf of sellers who previously by law did not have to collect the revenue. So, this is why speaking with an accountant later on in the year to clarify how this is going to affect your 2023 taxes is paramount. There's no sense doing it now, as from my understanding at this point in time, accountants dont even understand how this is going to affect them or us yet.
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