Fellow eBay Sellers - Are you going to pay any tariffs for US Buyers?

[ae_purveyors]

Stallion and Chit Chats have released shipping options that allow the Seller to ship their items and pay the tariffs, instead of the buyer.

So I wanted to ask my fellow Canadian sellers what they plan on doing:

a). Shipping status quo and the buyer being asked to pay the tariffs at the time of delivery

b). Shipping using Delivered Duty Paid and paying the tariffs themselves as the Seller

I looked at a US tariff calculator site and a $20 CAD turns into $50 CAD with added tariffs, for reference.

[flipistics]

---

@ae_purveyors wrote:
Stallion and Chit Chats have released shipping options that allow the Seller to ship their items and pay the tariffs, instead of the buyer.

So I wanted to ask my fellow Canadian sellers what they plan on doing:

a). Shipping status quo and the buyer being asked to pay the tariffs at the time of delivery

b). Shipping using Delivered Duty Paid and paying the tariffs themselves as the Seller

I looked at a US tariff calculator site and a $20 CAD turns into $50 CAD with added tariffs, for reference.

---

There may also be a $100 per package fee (going up to $200 in June). It's not clear if that is additive or what applies to what right now.  I've disabled shipping to the States for any China and Hong Kong items. IMO it's not worth the likely problems.

Also, why would you even think of paying it as the seller? You'd be losing money on the sale.

[phc64]

No.

(I just learned that posts on this forum must have at least ten characters.)

[mrdutch1001]

"Are you going to pay any tariffs for US Buyers?"

Nope, No way!  any taxes, duties, tariffs are the responsibility of the Buyer!

I ship solely via Canada Post.

I do not list/sell anything that is not made in either USA or Canada(albeit  on a rare occasion something may be CoO UK or European country) PLUS I do not list/sell anything over $50 value so IF any applicable tariffs, would be minimal. For years all of my listings have contained within the description a statement regarding the buyer is responsible for taxes,duties,tariffs...

[videotimeplus]

Nope, business as usual until a problem arises 

[ae_purveyors]

Yes you would go into the red obviously. But I’m curious if sellers would be willing to pay the costs to keep business if they can offset the loss with their profits from their other sales.

[sapphyres-designer-jewellery]

---

@ae_purveyors wrote:

Yes you would go into the red obviously. But I’m curious if sellers would be willing to pay the costs to keep business if they can offset the loss with their profits from their other sales.

---

I would say 1% of my store was Hong Kong/China. I just delisted those items and will not relist anything that's going to be a problem (if these tariffs hang around). I'd rather just not have the sale than sell something I'll lose money on.

I have some stamp souvenir sheets in my store that I will ship inside a greeting card, so I don't expect there to be a problem with these and I did state in my listing they ship from Canada (they are on this store, on dot ca site).

C.

[ricarmic]

No I won't pay the tariffs.

Until something happens that causes me "grief" (time or $$$ wise) I'm going to continue as usual, this every day somethings different to worry about that most of the time changes to not be a problem or as big a problem has moved me to this strategy.

I've actually shipped a small group of China stamps to the US yesterday. Keep in mind that I use Canada Post, and stamps on the parcel, so the COO "CN" in hand writing on the tracked packet form is what would cause the inspection. I'll report back here what happens, but I suspect that we will have inconsistent results depending on what customs centre etc the parcels go through.

So the business cost I'm willing to accept is the risk with this parcel and the possible loss, communication with the buyer around it etc.

I'm still not clear on how the USPS will all the sudden be able to manually inspect a million parcels a day, I suspect over the coming days we'll see that they'll focus their attention in certain places/directions and we'll have to adapt to that. 

Time will tell!

[reallynicestamps]

Since the tariff would be 145% of the selling price + a $100 random fee, there is no price point at which this would be feasible.

[brettjet38]

Fellow eBay Sellers - Are you going to pay any tariffs for US Buyers?

[fergua3]

you can't really pay tariffs for US buyers unless you send them money after the sale and after they are assessed tariffs.  Lowering prices won't really come across as payng their tariffs....

But to answer the OP question:  Not A Dime.

This is the new Golden Age of America.  Why should i fork out any money for them?  What i will do is stop selling to the US if it becomes a problem.

There are already 2 major toy importers of toy lines into the US that have stopped importing into the US because of the Chinese tariffs.  That is going to happen more and more with many items US citizens buy.  They are going to be trapped behind a tariff wall soon.

[38e_avenue]

Why? 

Trump said they will be all rich like never before, so I would rather triple the prices 😉

[haddonfieldmedia]

Absolutely not, but I'm debating whether to keep shipping Chinese stuff there or not.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

---

@phc64 wrote:

No.

(I just learned that posts on this forum must have at least ten characters.)

---

Very bleepin' unlikely re the survey! Went over to be on safe side. If post is less than 10 characters duties, taxes, processing, brokerage charges will be billed to your ebay account at a later date.😟 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I offer "free shipping", but I don't pay the shipping for the buyer. The shipping cost is built into my pricing structure. I offer free shipping for marketing reasons. 

I would look at tariffs the same way. If eBay had an option for delivery duties paid via UPS or Canada Post, I would consider paying them if eBay had a way to make it very clear to US buyers that my listings came duty free. Similar to how free shipping is written underneath items with free shipping. 

At the end of the day, all the input costs and line items related to your sale are paid by you, regardless of who is initially charged for them. This is an oversimplification, but an item is worth what it is worth. If I have an item worth $100 and it costs $20 to ship, I can charge $100 w/ free shipping, $80+$20 shipping, but I cannot charge $100+$20 shipping because it is not worth $120 total. Add the duty into that equation and it's the same thing. If there is a $10 duty, I can now charge $100 w/ duties paid+free shipping, $70+$10 duty+$20 shipping, etc. In that scenario, it makes more sense to pay for the duty on your end so long as eBay will market that the duty is paid. 

The point of the free shipping example is that regardless of who is charged for what line item during the transaction, you as the seller walk away with the exact same amount of profit once the transaction is concluded. 

If the de minimis is removed for all goods, one issue we will probably enocunter is all US buyers assuming that everything from Canada could hit them with a duty. So eBay would have to find a way to strongly push sellers offering delivery duties paid, so that when buyers search they can easily understand that if they click on a specific listing, there are 100 percent no duties. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Everything is so fluid, and we have been facing different threats for months with delays. A scenario with a tariff like the one you describe would be a soft ban on imports.

If we're just having a discussion on the marketing aspect of duties, the answer is the same as the "free shipping" discussion that has been discussed to death on these forums. Whoever pays it is more up to the mechanisms that eBay allows, and what makes sense marketing wise. But at the end of the day if you choose to sell to US buyers and there are duties, it comes out of your margins regardless of whether you pay it or the buyer pays it.

There will be situations where this isn't the case. Like a seller who chooses not to directly market to the USA and prices their items strictly for Canadians, but leaves USA unblocked and almost never gets a sale to the USA.

A similar example to this was during the Canada Post strike, I left my lettermail listings up with UPS calculated shipping. Meaning, people were seeing $15-$20+ shipping instead of $3.99. I didn't drop my BIN prices by $15 and eat the cost of UPS shipping for lettermail items. This was the same as not having the items available at all, which is what I think some people might do. 

[john_koenig99]

In my case,  that's a big cup of NOPE.