The Canadian Taxman Goes Browsing on eBay

Kaneda2112 writes "A story in the Globe And Mail points out that the Canada Revenue Agency is now trolling eBay Canada for high volume sellers — looking to make sure eBay's biggest users are accurately reporting their income. They've successfully gotten a court order for the names, addresses, and other personal information for that website's biggest users. 'Canadians spend about $5-billion online each year and eBay is by far the largest electronic marketplace, accounting for about a quarter of the total sales. The site was visited by nearly 11 million Canadians in August, according to company figures. The CRA said in court filings that it is targeting people who qualified for eBay's PowerSeller program in 2004 and 2005. Only top eBay sellers can qualify for the program, which provides benefits to members. Those benefits include prioritized customer service, special promotions and sales tips.'"

Re:The Law

[compwizrd]

at least businesses are required to self-assess and remit the PST when they buy from a non-local supplier

ebay's Power Seller program

[spacerog]

According to eBay
http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/welcome.html [ebay.com]

How do I qualify?

Each month eBay automatically sends email invitations to qualified sellers. To qualify, members must:

Have been an active member for 90 days
Average a minimum of $1000 in sales per month, for three consecutive months
Achieve an overall Feedback rating of 100, of which 98% or more is positive
Have an account in good financial standing

Although that is direct from the eBay site it is not 100% accurate. My experience indicates that invitations to the Power Seller program are based on quantity of items sold and not dollar amounts. Somewhere between 3 and 5 items per month for three or four consecutive months will trigger the invitation email. I get invitation emails quite a bit but never have I sold $1000 worth of stuff in any month let alone three consecutive months.

Re:Are you telling me...

[Nos.]

Yes, in fact there are 33 million (or so) of us. And yes, our dollar is worth almost as much, or more than the USD currently. We don't say "eh" at the end of ever sentence, and we do have a military, but we focus on peace keeping, not peace making.

Re:The Law

[Nos.]

Every business still needs to charge its customers PST if they are selling in province. So if I'm in BC, and buy from NCIX, I have to pay PST. If I'm out of province, I don't. This is true across the country.