Small item: USPS GROUND ADVANTAGE.OIL SEAL $6.00 + $7.75 = $14.85.

ADDED AND DEDUCTED TAX $1.10.

TRANSACTION FEES $2.27.

SHIPPING LABEL $4.13.

ENVELOPE .26 cents @100.

PROCEEDS $7.35.

Gas money to drive to work…

If the item being sold — wasn’t free — I couldn’t do it — any longer.

Thank you Sir, Mr. Economic’s and Math Teacher..

I’m rich in other ways, and means.

.asco

Nowhere near as bad as that in the UK and I tend to only sell when fleabay offer their 80% discount on fees (usually for a block of four days every fortnight).

Our Royal Mail currently offer free collection from your house and to bring the shipping label with them, also for free - over time, this saves quite a few £££ on printer ink costs.

The postage cost for an oil seal would be £1.15.

Try to keep in the back corner of your mind

that the Income Tax IRS could be as high as 39%.

Giving you .11 cents on the $!dollar profit.

just remember when the titanic sank - what occurred?

asco

I guess that's a US and/or state issue.

I too sell items on eBay, and their fees are ridiculous, the one that gets me is that they charge me a final value fee on the item sold but also a final value fee on the shipping which is usually a break even or money loser for me, and to top it off why do they charge me a final value fee on the total amount of the sale plus the shipping plus the sales tax they add on? Why do I pay a final value fee on sales tax & shipping? Why? Because they pretty much have a monopoly on online auction sales.
 

What if you arrange your own postage instead of relying on fleabay's, or is that not an option stateside?

I offer free postage, but make sure that my prices account for this, and on the listing I select Royal Mail or one of the other couriers. Fleabay play no role in the postage side of things, unless I send overseas via their Global Shipping Service (GSS). Even then, I'm only posting to a UK hub and the buyer has paid fleabay's overseas postage costs.

I have observed that postage to the UK from the US is a lot cheaper using GSS than USPS, particularly for bulkier items.

As an aside, it looks like UK Customs and Excise no longer raise a tax charge on any items (subject to a declared value limit of c£200) when they hit our shores. I assume that this because the majority of overseas purchases are done through the big online players (Fleabay, Amazon etc) and those companies have to collect tax at source and forward this to our HMRC. So things that Tony, DEET, KDI and Vintage Connections sent me weren't taxed. 

I am doing the same with the postage and am offering free shipping, I almost never do the auction style sales, I always have use the “buy it now” price option and have my shipping figured into what I will sell the item for. But the one that still gets me is why I pay a final value fee on what the item sold for plus the sales tax, I’m not making any money on the sales tax. So now I make sure my “buy it now” price is high enough to cover all my final value fees plus what I will spend on shipping and I make the amount of money I am comfortable with when I sell an item.

Do you have sales tax on private sales over there? We don't.

Businesses with a turnover of c£87k or more need to register for VAT (Value Added Tax) and must charge this tax on most products (some are exempt). Smaller businesses don't need to register (although they can if they want) and so don't charge the tax.

The businesses that are VAT registered can reclaim the VAT that they have paid out, so each quarter they submit a return to HMRC, showing what they have collected and what they have paid and net one off against the other, sometimes resulting in a claim for a refund from HMRC. I used to do these returns back in the day!   HMRC would occasionally visit a business, just to make sure that their accounts were correct.

In the US, it used to be if you bought online from a private party or from an out of state business there was no sales tax.  Now places like ebay collect sales tax which which they are supposed to give to the correct state...  I think the destination state... 

What ebay does to "screw" sellers is say you sell an item for $100 and the sales tax rate is 8% or $8.00.  The seller does not receive the tax collected...  but when ebay calculates the seller fees, they base the fees on the after tax price of $108 and not the $100. 

That's my understanding anyway

If I am selling, I usually link a craigslist post And a spelled number. Screw them all!! Especially on something like a rebuilt bike. They can get as much as 30% I think I remember. Freakin' robbers!