eBay Foreign Sales Tax

In certain countries eBay may add a "Foreign Sales Tax" to the final order price. This tax is then remitted directly by eBay to the tax authorities in that country. Currently this can apply to sales that occur in:

• USA
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Norway

This behaves differently depending on whether or not you are signed up for eBay managed payments.

Paypal Payments

If you are collecting payments via Paypal, the sales tax is included in the Amount Paid that ebay provides to Tradebox. To prevent your orders going into query in Tradebox, you should tick the Include Foreign Sales Tax setting in the Details page of the eBay channel:

You will then see the eBay foreign sales tax appear as a line on the order:

If you have your eBay channel in Tradebox integrated with an accounts package, you can choose to either include or exclude this value on the invoice/order you create. The default behaviour of the software is to exclude this tax value. To include the Foreign Sales Tax on the invoice/order you create in the integrated accounts software go into the eBay sales channel, choose the accounting tab (Sage 50/Xero) and on the Postings page tick the box entitled, "Include Foreign Sales Tax". Then choose Save.

This value you will appear on the invoice/order as a separate line with the default tax code held for the country the sale originated in.

Ebay Managed Payments

If you are using eBay managed payments, then the foreign sales tax is not included in the amount paid from eBay, so we would advise leaving the Include Foreign Sales Tax setting unticked in both the channel details and in the accounts postings screen. If you especially want to include the foreign sales tax on your accounts entries, you can tick both boxes, however please note that this may result in the orders going into query and you would need to manually amend them.