Trump tax 25% on Canada - Who is collecting?

[itolduandso]

I am considering to put the store on vacation for the next few days, I doubt there will be many cross border orders anyhow, to avoid the chaos. I don't want buyers to refuse packages and me have to pay return shipping cross border.  Any news from ebay how it will be collected? 
- By Ebay at checkout?

- By the shipping company, which will add a broker fee on top of it?

[flipistics]

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@itolduandso wrote:

I am considering to put the store on vacation for the next few days, I doubt there will be many cross border orders anyhow, to avoid the chaos. I don't want buyers to refuse packages and me have to pay return shipping cross border.  Any news from ebay how it will be collected? 
- By Ebay at checkout?

- By the shipping company, which will add a broker fee on top of it?

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No one seems to know the details yet, and we likely won't until Tuesday since Trump will probably retailate on top of our retailation (which we have no choice but to do). Normally it would be collected by the shipping company when they deliver the package. That will also likely grind all the US shipping to a halt since they don't have the capacity to actually do that. There's a slight possibility some sort of de minimis might still apply, although it's looking unlikely right now.

If you have a store on dot com, you'd probably be wise to put it on vacation and save yourself what will likely be a lot of grief. If you have a store on dot ca, there's no reason to stop orders to other places. Just disable sales to the USA. If you're using shipping policies, this is trivial.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@flipistics wrote:

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@itolduandso wrote:

I am considering to put the store on vacation for the next few days, I doubt there will be many cross border orders anyhow, to avoid the chaos. I don't want buyers to refuse packages and me have to pay return shipping cross border.  Any news from ebay how it will be collected? 
- By Ebay at checkout?

- By the shipping company, which will add a broker fee on top of it?

---

No one seems to know the details yet, and we likely won't until Tuesday since Trump will probably retailate on top of our retailation (which we have no choice but to do). Normally it would be collected by the shipping company when they deliver the package. That will also likely grind all the US shipping to a halt since they don't have the capacity to actually do that. There's a slight possibility some sort of de minimis might still apply, although it's looking unlikely right now.

If you have a store on dot com, you'd probably be wise to put it on vacation and save yourself what will likely be a lot of grief. If you have a store on dot ca, there's no reason to stop orders to other places. Just disable sales to the USA. If you're using shipping policies, this is trivial.

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Re: Collected by the shipping company.

Yes, but based on what customs declares as owing. 

Duties, Taxes & Processing have always been based on either CBA - Canada or CBP - USA and physical inspections tied to the customs document - Formal entry.  With the 800.00 de minimus shipments were pre cleared but xray/dog or physical inspections are still a possibility. 

Is the +25% on top of whatever the current duty rate is based on the HS code if there is no de minimus? What happens if shipper assigns wrong hs code either in error or ignorance? That's what border officials are there. Best example I can think of would be when you go to the airport and they need to charge for over sized. They don't bill sight unseen. They need to have the actual luggage. 

eBay pre-collecting is not a safe way to do anything. For the system of collecting VAT for the EU how are shipments cross referenced? It would be the same nightmare if every shipment to the USA and Canada had tariffs attached. If the go to is a formal entry it comes back to the physical goods which eBay never is in posession. 

https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/what-tariff-and-who-pays-it

See notes about tariff equalling loose change in scheme of things.

Imports are inspected in the United States to ensure they are safe, genuine, and lawfully sourced. This helps protect consumers, the environment, and domestic industry. (Throw in not illegal drugs which is also Trumble's radar.)

[byto253]

The interesting thing is if the tariffs are even legal as the authority is derived from a national security emergency.  We could see court action on the state side challenging the entire thing.  

[itolduandso]

The process with IOSS to EU and UK had issues initially because ebay and shippers were not setup to handle it so I would imagine inital chaos here too but now it works fine. The IOSS code ebay gives me is same code for all sellers on ebay but the schema works by attaching the order number, value, contents, HS Code and tax paid. This works up to 150 EUR. I could imagine same process would apply for US bound shipments with anything over 800 dollars will require formal entry and broker fee. 

[marnotom!]

I think it’s very unlikely that eBay will be responsible for collecting and remitting duty/tariffs due on purchases from US buyers if it turns out eBay sales are subject to tariffs. eBay doesn’t collect duties/tariffs for any other country. Taxes, yes. Tariffs, no.

[flipistics]

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@marnotom! wrote:
I think it’s very unlikely that eBay will be responsible for collecting and remitting duty/tariffs due on purchases from US buyers if it turns out eBay sales are subject to tariffs. eBay doesn’t collect duties/tariffs for any other country. Taxes, yes. Tariffs, no.

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I don't think there's any way the US government can process all the tariffs, at least not right now. I believe Trump said he's going to create a department to handle it all, but that won't be up and running for months. It would make sense for them to mandate that online marketplaces collect and remit them as that wouldn't cost the government anything. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

I definitely can't see eBay doing it without a government mandate. I'm not sure they legally could even if they wanted to. It would sure be a big help to small sellers though.

[sin-n-dex]

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@flipistics wrote:

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@marnotom! wrote:
I think it’s very unlikely that eBay will be responsible for collecting and remitting duty/tariffs due on purchases from US buyers if it turns out eBay sales are subject to tariffs. eBay doesn’t collect duties/tariffs for any other country. Taxes, yes. Tariffs, no.

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I don't think there's any way the US government can process all the tariffs, at least not right now. I believe Trump said he's going to create a department to handle it all, but that won't be up and running for months. It would make sense for them to mandate that online marketplaces collect and remit them as that wouldn't cost the government anything. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

I definitely can't see eBay doing it without a government mandate. I'm not sure they legally could even if they wanted to. It would sure be a big help to small sellers though.

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I'm thinking our cross border shippers will be collecting and remitting them as well (and sellers can keep their ship location to US). That's the impression I get from the Chit Chats message, but I am just speculating here.

C.

[cottagewoman]

Well guess who they'll be collecting them from? The seller. They must be looking into being a US broker as well.

[itolduandso]

Having the location of the item set to US... don't you get hit with the US income tax forms reporting requirements since you list your location being in the US?

Legally I believe having the location declared in US is not necessary an issue with the US customs, since you are just putting the information on ebay, but you are conveniently selecting it beneficial for you to say it is US. So it's kind of a grey zone.  I got into issue with that on another site, I believe it was Reverb, so I changed to Canada.  Reverb and Kidizen didn't allow me to do that and I think Etsy caused also issue, not only because of the tax forms but also because Stallion warehouse in the US is actually a shared warehouse they don't own, it's a 3PL provider and they proide shipping services for other companies like Stallion, so the issue was my account was constantly frozen because the system flagged my account as being fraud because I would have used the bulk 3PL address in the US and not the actual address. 

In ebay I believe the item location and the ship from address is a separate setting. But I could see ebay may want to clamp down on this.

Depending on how the tariffs are implemented, I may consider swithing the location to US, if I still can do that. Whether the tariff is collected by Ebay or by the last mile delivery shipper, it doesn't matter because once I put the ship-from location being US, the buyer will be under impression there are no tariffs to pay on check out or receiving.

The only case where putting location being US in ebay would make sense, if I had the option to pay for the import tariff myself so the buyer doesn't have to. And this would be complicated to pull off for something that is so fluid.