It could be worse. Etsy and taxes.

[femmefan1946]

Reading the Globe and Mail Report on Business this morning, I read an article on how badly etsy has messed up collecting Canadian sales taxes.

Basically they have told sellers to work out their costs for remitting taxes and add that to the asking price.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/small-business/article-etsy-sellers-sales-tax-law/

There may be a paywall.

[marnotom!]

I sometimes hit a paywall for Globe articles, sometimes I don’t. I didn’t this time. Thanks for passing this along.

[mrdutch1001]

Oh yes, Etsy has really created a horrible mess, a total disaster for the Canadian sellers on Etsy who are GST/HST/PST registered...

Something so simple and Etsy just threw it to the wind...

as an infrequent/occasional seller on Etsy, the Canadian taxation process doesn't put any additional burden on me, but it is in total shambles for the other sellers...

[marnotom!]

Ah, went to re-read the article and hit the paywall.

One thing I recall from reading it earlier is that Etsy only recently started charging and collecting taxes on Canadian sellers’ fees. That was a bit surprising. Does Etsy not have a physical presence in Canada? I can’t find a Canadian address for them except a possible rented address in T-dot.

[mrdutch1001]

Like eBay, Etsy implemented the Canadian taxation July 1st...however, unlike eBay who gave its seller some advance warning with its announcement; Etsy gave its sellers 30 day notification. To the best of my knowledge, Etsy has no physical presence in Canada.

[reallynicestamps]

I doubt it. EBay is much larger and has only an office over a coffee shop in Toronto.

(I once googled it and put a picture of the building on the Boards. EBay was not happy about that.)

I have listed on etsy and I followed the blog Regretsy for a few years until etsy got nasty enough to close her down.  They went from a real handmade crafts site to a "handmade by preteen girls in a factory in Guangdong  who work 14 hour days until they jump off the roof" site. 

There were many many complaints from real artisans about their trademarked designs being ripped off.

Not a well-run company.

A good place to sell artisan crafts though, in spite of everything. They do have the right audience.

[mrdutch1001]

Etsy allows vintage, and craft supplies along with handmade crafts, handmade goods designed by the crafter, but made elsewhere....but of course the site is plagued with so many resellers and has more than its share of illegal/trademark and copyright infringements...

I list many items of same categories that I list on eBay, as they all "fit" the requirements for what is legitimately allowed to be listed and sold on Etsy. My sales on Etsy are comparable to those here on eBay, even though eBay has a  much larger audience and is so much more well known than Etsy...

[femmefan1946]

The article yesterday prompted a Letter to the Editor today from an etsy seller in PEI, who was disgruntled by the whole thing.

[recped]

CAVEAT: I have not been following this issue over at Etsy very closely, just a cursory knowledge without the specific details of the implementation.

The article at the Globe is "poor" at best. I almost keeled over at this line "it has 378,000 sellers in Canada who made a combined $15.5-billion in sales in 2021" That is actually 2 Billion Dollars MORE than Etsy's worldwide GMV as reported in their 2021 Financial Statements.

As for the rest, sounds to me like the rest of it is nothing more than the usual disgruntled sellers who don't have a clue, complaining about things which are actually non-issues.

Etsy doesn't seem to have handled the situation very well, they must have known this was coming (or should have) a year ago so 30 days of notification is ridiculous. The alleged quotes of advice they gave to sellers seems unbelievable, I suspect there is a lot of "GIGO" happening, bad answers to bad questions.