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Are you talking specifically about cash transactions? Because ebay collects sales tax now.

• mywittyname 6y ago
  Most sellers on eBay are businesses. But you can buy stuff on FB Marketplace or CL without paying sales tax, even if you use a service like venmo for handling payments. In most states, you are technically supposed to report these transaction on your income tax return, but enforcement of that is not practical for the state.
• vonmoltke 6y ago
  In general, sellers only need to collect sales tax if they meet the legal definition of "reseller". The test varies from state to state, but is generally a combination of gross annual revenue from sales and number of sales transactions per year. Generally, transactions between private parties are not subject to sales tax. eBay was hit by special "marketplace facilitator" clauses in remote tax laws that have popped up since South Dakota v. Wayfair. The tax is actually imposed on the marketplace, not the seller. It doesn't matter what the seller's status is relative to the above, because it is eBay that is being required to remit he tax. If the seller is independently obligated to remit tax to a given state as well, they count the eBay-collected tax against their own obligation.
  • chrischen 6y ago
    Yes but in practice it means that reselling old used stuff is now taxed, which of course discourages the reuse part of the reduce, reuse, recycle paradigm. FB marketplace has the same tax requirement, so that only leaves cash transactions on craigslist now (which people probably wouldn't pay the tax even if were required).