On July 1, a bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives that would impose complex sales tax collecting requirements on internet retailers and entrepreneurs, including our eBay sellers. If passed, HR 5660, the so-called, "Main Street Fairness Act," would require small online retailers to comply with varying and regularly changing sales tax rules and rates for thousands of tax jurisdictions, and to collect and remit sales taxes from each customer. This new sales tax scheme would be extremely burdensome and costly to small online retailers like you who have set up shop on the internet. A similar bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate as well. eBay is working very hard to stop this bill from becoming law, but we need your help.

Please join our effort to stop the passage of this anti-small business bill. In three minutes or less, you can sign this petition urging your lawmakers to protect small, online retailers by opposing new tax burdens.

Together we can make a difference!

Sincerely,

eBay Government Relations

I sort of smiled when I was sent this.

Ebay cares when a Government bill will hammer their business,but does not care when it's own policies suck dry the profit margins of small internet sellers.

To hell with them,let the bill pass. I don't use ebays store services because, if you have been around long enough,they have gone from 3% to 10% and have gone from,on small stores, 2 cents to 20 cents for listing fees.

EBays costs have gone up as the years have gone by, but so has the volume of traffic done on ebay as well as their commissions.

I think their base line profit margin is more to blame than anything on how we have been treated as sellers of a product that encompasses less than 1/10th of a % of the total items listed.

We are marginal and there fore how these things effect us are unimportant to ebay.

With that in mind,since I no longer use ebay to sell on and rarely buy, I will marginalize my concern over how this will effect ebay as a whole.

This will bring on the privatized auction sites,sites dedicated to keep all transactions private,hosted in other countries and will be the demise of ebay's position as top money ™™™™™ in the online auction community.

I know others will see this as a bad thing, I see how it is a good thing on many levels.

Ebay cannot charge you 10% on a sale if the Government demands a 7% tax,then paypals 3%, so 20% right off the top :)

Yah,they will be the end of ebays position or ebays current fee system,either way,both will work well for me.