A court order has been given for high volume Canadian eBay sellers sales information to be released to the tax authorities. This includes names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all sellers who qualified as PowerSellers in 2004 and 2005.
The Canada Revenue Agency (equivalent to HMRC in the UK) wants to cross reference the data with that filed on sellers tax returns and verify the income sellers have reported.
Whilst eBay have argued in court that they don’t have the information required as it is held on eBay servers located outside Canada the courts have ruled they are legally obliged to hand over the data.
It will be interesting to see if the US and UK tax authorities follow suit and demand eBay divulge sellers information. So far eBay have defended assisting the US IRS and in the UK only hand over individual sellers records when named records are specifically requested.
Sellers who declare legitimate earnings have nothing to fear, but those that are not paying any taxes due should contact the Inland Revenue before the Revenue contact them.
3 Responses
They could of course use a product like Terapeak to calculate eBay sellers sales
Hey Trevor, they don’t need to! They have a spider called Xenon which has been trawling the Canadian site and knows exactly which seller has sold what. All they need is the names and addresses to tally up with the User Id! 😉
All the more reason why anyone who has a company should have have the ebay account in the company name , not in their own name. IR are not known for their lateral thinking prowess….