Hot Rods eBay is what's wrong

I’ve just about stopped using E-Bay. It was great years ago I’m slowing down. I’m sorry about the tax as Summit was my almost next day supplier if the part was in Nevada. With few shops selling fittings and others things I want I now look more for them locally on the net before I order. One auto parts store sells Hot Rod oil so I at least eliminated Amazon for that.

 

Jimmy
I know I'm out of the loop but what the hell is Hot Rod oil?

 

I got 3 packages from ebay in the last 2 days and every order is wrong

 

@Squablow ....you are spot on and more succinctly made the point I was trying to get across. None of the sales were, in fact, “tax free”.......they were made “tax uncollected” or perhaps “tax deferred”.

And, your second point is also correct. In a prior post I addressed the complaints about “terms and conditions”......needed to deal with the Pricks who are always trying to game the system and ultimately do a lot of damage to the rest of us.

Ray

 

What you are doing is saying that whenever a government entity decides to choose a certain word to describe a legal term, that the term can no longer be used by the rest of the world as its defined in the dictionary. The word avoid is useful in many contexts and can be applied to government tax collection.

They built two new bridges crossing the Ohio River and did some real underhanded shit to collect tolls/taxes.
You can't pay the toll as you cross. They photograph your license plate and send you a bill.....which drives up the cost of collecting the tolls. Now a couple of caveats. Its your responsibility to pay even if they don't send you a bill or send it to the wrong address. My d-in-law works for a company that reimburses her for toll costs so she has no reason not to pay them. She moved and changed the address on her drivers license to reflect her new address.....which is what is supposed to be the source for the toll collectors billing. They sent the bill to her old address and she never got it. The bill was for $40 but by the time she found out, a few months later, the penalties were almost $200. They affect your credit rating and there is nothing you can do about it. Its a real scam.....but wait, there is more.
They offer a discounted monthly pass for people who must commute 5 days a week. Its monitored by an electronic gizmo. So 2 times a day X 5 days X 4 weeks= 40 times you MUST cross the bridge each month. If someone doesn't cross 40 times they lose their discount and must pay full price. Not sure but I think its $2 if you have a transponder and $4 if you don't. So if you commute back and forth only 39 times instead of 40, you owe an additional $80. People who don't make their 40 times often go drive back and forth just to save the $80.
You would be correct in saying someone is "avoiding" or "evading" a tax.
Additionally there is an older narrower bridge that does not charge tolls. Not quite as convenient because you have to exit I-65 and take a 5 minute detour. Thats the one I use. I think its just as correct to say that by taking an exit from I-65 and passing thru town and then reaccessing I-65 again, I have "avoided" a tax.....I have also "evaded" a tax because I didn't have to pay anything. I evaded by changing my route.
Lastly is the "out of state" vehicles that pass over the bridge. Ky sends a bill to the home state of the vehicle owner.
If they don't get paid they can attach penalties and ruin the persons credit rating.......and if the driver never receives the bill, they don't even know they owe anything. Some states provide vehicle information to Ky but others refuse to tell Ky who owns the plate. The people who live in states that don't co-operate have "avoided" a tax because their homestate refuses to comply, and its legal.

Now I agree with both of you that words do matter, and I think none of us would be having this exchange of view points if words weren't important to us. All in all I think its "much ado about nothing" in this particular instance.

 

No, I said it's OK to avoid taxes.

What you're saying, is your local government has decided they aren't going to allow people to even avoid them. Like most big gubbmint "programs" they are so great they are mandatory and going to force them down your throat. I suppose we're getting off the beam here so I'll leave it at that, unless somone says something really idiotic, which is a possibility I suppose.

 

I like bike trails

 

My uncle has a snoblower

 

I have bought less than 10 things from E bay in my lifetime. Just listings and not on auction. Never sold anything either.

 

Lucas markets their high zinc motor oil as "Hot Rod" . It has no star burst with letter/number specs. The store has 10-30 and 20-50 and also another brand. It's Ace Auto Parts in Huntington Beach Ca. Bruce actually stocks some speed parts and VP racing fuel.

 

I expected it to be that "Ten Buck Brad" stuff, as in Brad Penn.

 

I will celebrate my twentieth year selling and buying on E-bay this year. When I started with them I was more of a seller than a buyer. I got in early when it was fun. We used to hit pawn shops and buy and double/ triple our money, then the pawn shops started doing it, good by that part of our business. We acquired some dealerships and started making sales over $100,000 per year. UPS even gave us a set up in our garage. Plus selling con-signed heavy equipment on E-bay also, all this part time while working 40 hr a week. . Things happen and now I’m usually just a buyer. But.... the good thing about E-bay is they have a thing called feedback, or did have. It takes a lot of work to keep a good feedback rating. I still have my 100% positive feedback. Also they will show the buyer your feed back and also how long you have sold under your current name. It takes a lot to maintain a good feed back under the same name for twenty years. When you do this people can and do trust you. You have to EARN trust!
I just buy now, because I don’t want to ship, but anytime I buy I check the seller’s history. Just my story.






Bones

 

I tried to find a 216 valve cover at the local old junkyard but there was none worth bringing home but found one on Ebay for 25 dollars shipped to my door.

 

What I'm saying is that the word "tax " can be used as a "subject" in a sentence and that in that context it can be evaded or avoided . When working inside the actual written law itself, the accepted term is "evaded" or "evasion". So while a lawyer trying a case may be limited to saying some form of the word "evade", the general public can correctly say they "avoided" a tax.
Since we are talking about eBay taxes, let's take a legal example. Someone finds a part on eBay. The seller only lives 10 miles away so the potential buyer drives over a looks at the part but feels the price is too high. He notices that the seller is restoring a car which the potential buyer has a stash of parts for. A month later the ad expires and is removed from eBay.
Now the opportunistic potential buyer contacts the seller and offers to trade some parts he has in his stash for the part that was on eBay. By "bartering" with the seller and exchanging parts he has "avoided" the need to pay a tax.

Like you, I think this is a good place to end the difference in view points,.....

 

Depending on what you are selling and how you sell it can make a difference. A guy at work was retiring and moving out of state. He offered me some magazines, ‘50’s and ‘60’s car mags and some Surfer mags, he was in a “surf band” when he was a teen in the ‘60’s. Sight unseen I offered $50 when he estimated he had a hundred magazines. Next day he says he found a bunch more and I gave him a C-note. With the first ten I sold on eBay I had my money back and did real well with them. The high note was $88 for Surfer Magazine Vol 2, No 1.
Then there was my mother in laws Oster blender. We were breaking up her house after she passed away. Our sons and DIL’s looked over the stuff and picked some things, then my wife invited her long time girlfriend to look but nobody wanted the 1950’s blender. It looked like new, but we couldn’t find the blades. I bought new blades and gaskets on eBay for $8.74, shipped free, then l checked past sales and listed it at $50 with free shipping, it would ship in a $15 Priority box and I’d clear a quick $20 or so for hardly any effort.
Sold it on a BIN the day it was listed and when the buyer received it he sent $20 to my PayPal account to cover the shipping, he insisted on that!
Turns out the price was fair but he is a collector of appliances and the Oster Bee Hive model is desirable, he was thrilled when he saw the condition.
Honest descriptions, good and clear photos and a realistic price all pay dividends. Some of you guys think the days of eBay are over but my PayPal account says otherwise.
Oh, and just like @Boneyard51 I enjoy a Feedback rating of 100%.

 

Is all of this going to be on the test?

 

I like my Harbor Freight Tools.

Sent from my SM-G973U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Guys, I could bore you all to tears with some of my E-bay stories........it was, did I say was......fun!










Bones

 

Reading this thread is very taxing...

 

I'm outta here,........................Taxi,Taxi

or should it be Uber?. (Are they interchangeable ? )

 

Barter a taxable event. The IRS forms have a line for this. Not paying the tax would be ... evasion!

 

ekimneirbo, not to belabor the point, but in your bridge example, if you took a different route, you avoided the toll. Totally legal, you are not required to drive over the bridge. If you covered up your license plates with rags and then drove over the bridge, you evaded the toll, you rightfully owed the toll according to the law but did not pay.

Also a big plus on eBay, not only does the description let you know what the seller knows about the part (either they have a detailed breakdown of what it came from and what it fits, or they don't know, and then you know that they don't know), and also the seller is forced to either put a price on it, or let it sell for the high bid in an auction. Swap meets where nothing is priced is very frustrating. "Make an offer" is not a price.

 

The original question was about a " Sales Tax" which is now automatically applied when purchasing an item off eBay. When someone doesn't make that purchase, they have avoided paying a state sales tax.
The federal statute is basically designed for income by businesses and is an income tax not a sales tax. If someone trades a Rolls Royce for a Shelby GT, the IRS would expect to see some paperwork explanation and taxes would be involved. If Billy Bob trades an oil pressure guage for a shifter handle for his hot rod, he pays no sales tax and no one expects him to declare it on his taxes. Billy Bob is a retired Federal Employee and in this state he is not required to pay state income taxes because federal retirements are exempt from state income taxes. The value received from the exchange of parts is insufficient to require reporting. Further, his retirement income is below the poverty level so he probably isn't required to pay any federal income taxes and would use the short form that doesn't require itemization.
The simple truth is that people trade parts all the time and never pay any taxes when doing so. Putting that in context, they have both "avoided" paying a tax and concurrently " evaded" paying a tax......and no one is going to prosecute them for it as long as it's simple low dollar hobby stuff.
Of course we have all seen the occasional stories on TV where some zealot went after some kid selling lemonade. I remember many years ago while working for the guvment , we had an overzealous guard. The Naval Captain who was over the site decided to go take a walk thru the plant on nightshift, and he parked his car near a building and went inside. When he came out there was a ticket on his window. The guard was commended for doing his job. A few months later the Captain had to check on something and again parked his car near a building. The guard saw it and promptly ticketed it again. Shortly after that he was looking for new employment. Ya gotta use a little common sense when applying laws to everyday life.
There is the "Letter of the law" and there is reality.

 

The Captain must have parked in an area clearly marked No Parking to have received the first ticket. Maybe a fire zone, or he blocked a doorway into the building. Later he used his position of power to have the guard fired when he purposely committed the same violation. Sounds like the guard had a clear cut case against unfair dismissal for simply doing his job.
And the Captain was a prick who felt a sense of entitlement because of his perceived importance. Laws, or simply rules, are passed to apply to all, ones position in life should not matter.

 

Sometimes people will renege if they don't get the price they want at auction. Had someone do this over a $2 item. Can't recall the details of the conversation back and forth but it got pretty comical. Some of these guys Mom has died 6 or 7 times, very tragic. So I finally dinged him with "negative feedback" and he got really pissed. LOL!!

 

Unfortunately, about half of the ebay vendors also have no clue as to what their stuff fits; even when they say they do!

What is the old phase we learned in grade school "caveat emptor"

But, yes, I buy a LOT of stuff on ebay.

Jon.

 

I won an expensive refrigerated air dryer for $10. Guy had no reserve.

Of course he refused to sell it to me.

 

Yep. Wankers. Putting a valuable or expensive item up for bid starting at .99c and "no reserve" can be a very good strategy. It may end up garnering a lot higher end price than it would otherwise. My theory is it plays into a little bit of psychology. People want to think they are going to get a "deal".

BUT, the seller has to be prepared for the flip side of that. People who back out like that should be flogged.

 

Yes.... they better delete it so we can’t look back and cheat.

 

Fordors, while I agree that the law “ should” be applied equally, in reality it never is! Our country is based on “ blind” justice, hence the mask of the holder of the scales. But, we are a capitalist society. The more money you have the “ better” you live! That’s the American way. If you work hard, you “ should” get nice things, fancy car, nice house, expensive play toys. If you don’t work you live in assisted living quarters, take the bus and have no toys.
Unfortunately this is also applied to law. But on the other hand if you have earned a position, it usually comes with perks!










Bones