eBay

itolduandso · ‎03-09-2022

Here my stats:

Canadian seller

Residing in Canada

In seller profile shows "Based on Canada"

Address on the account Canadian (yet, the Citizenship country shows U.S.)

Selling on Ebay.COM

Canadian bank US dollar account in Canada

I am on managed payments since last year and all going well.

The account I am talking about is different account from which I am posting this message.

I was never US resident and I don't have US citizenship and have never US address on Ebay account (axcept a short period of time about 20 years ago or so to be able to sell on ebay. Now my address is Canadian.

Today I registered for eBay Partner Network (Afiliate) to get any payout in case my social media postings take buyer to ebay to make a purchase.

To register for the eBay partner network it asks me for W-8BEN. To get then I need to get ITIN. I tried to skip that and see first how things go and not provide ebay W-8BEN for now and let them take that 30% to see if it's worth for me doing it and if yes, then later submit W-8BEN to avoid being charged the witholding 30% tax. However, I don't see it is possible to avoid submitting W-8BEN to eBay Partner Network. This needs to be submitted before even starting accept any payouts.

Now, I am asking myself why is Ebay asking for the W-8BEN form. I have submitted W-8BEN about two years ago. That was well before Ebay started with managed payments for all sellers. I believe the reason I needed submit the form is because the Citizenship on the account shows U.S. (I didn't bother dealing with with because it wasn't an issue).

The question is:

Do any Canadian sellers with the same specs need to submit W-8BEN?

recped · ‎03-09-2022

I think the Partner Network is entirely US based, therefore if you want to receive payouts of your referral commissions they will come from the US and eBay would need the W8-BEN to be filled or they would deduct income tax withholding.

I know my US bank account asks me to resubmit a W8-BEN every couple of years to avoid withholding on interest. I gave up doing in after about 10 years given the interest paid on the account is PENNIES and I can claim the amount deducted on my Canadian tax return if I want to.

CAVEAT:

Not having dealt with the Partner Network I'm making some guesses. One thing for sure, as far as Managed Payments goes if your citizenship/place of residence is inaccurate you will get stuck in an endless loop, you won't get your payments and the user id involved will be toast (no way to get paid). If you are currently receiving Managed Payments payouts with no issues then it's almost certain that your issue is specific to the Partner Network.

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

femmefan1946 · ‎03-09-2022

All this difficulty with Canadian (and other) residents who originally set up dotCOM accounts, makes me wonder if eBay is using these experiences to form a simple policy for setting up Managed Payments for our Chinese colleagues and competitors.

Has anyone bought from a Chinese seller lately and noticed if their listings include the "Google Pay/ ApplePay " options that indicate a Managed Payments account?

I would hope that working with Canadian, British, and Australian (etc NZ and Ireland) sellers with whom they at least share a common language and similar business laws would be seen as an important learning experience.

Maybe this should be its own post.