For those Canadians who are power sellers on EBay, watch out!!! The Federal Court of Canada has ruled that eBay Canada Ltd. must release personal information about its high-volume sellers to the Canada Revenue Agency. The information requested includes names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of all high-volume sellers. What the CRA is trying to determine is whether these individuals have reported this income on their tax return, essentially trying to collect their fair share of taxes.
According to the Globe and Mail Newspaper Report, "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".
This reminds me of the song "Hands in my pocket, hands in my pocket......"
There are those who welcome this crackdown because it appears there are large number of sellers run successful online retail businesses on the internet. Let's suppose I bought a car 2 years ago and decided to sell it on eBay. I made a nice profit of over $1000, which puts me into the "power sellers" category. Is CRA going to demand income taxes from me when clearly this is a one time purchase? How is the CRA going to police these activities? What about other online stores?
Have the CRA ever heard about "Just in time inventory"? Don't they think that those who wish to avoid income taxes can just set up their own online store and have the goods shipped from another country? Are they planning to waste tax payer's dollars going after every ecommerce site?
CRA you surely have your "Hands in my pocket".
Canadians, Beware!!!
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