Forum

Canada or USA, what do you suggest?
 

I'm looking to set up my first paypal and ebay stealth accounts to dropship in the U.S., and I have a dilemma between these two. On the plus side with Canada, it's no SSN, on the plus side with U.S., I read somewhere that by 2012, all 'imports' will be subject to a 30% automatic withholding tax. Hopefully I'm wrong, and if there is no withholding tax that'll have politicians doing away with all imports (wtf??) then Canada would be way better.

Stay outta my country - ha my only recommendation =)

I very much doubt that US Customs will require 30% to be withheld on imported goods. That would be a logistical nightmare for them. Any package valued at less than $2,000 is processed as an "informal entry" and is usually not subject to any type of duties. This information comes from the cbp.gov website.

However, there MAY be 30% withholding for foreign eBay sellers who sell to USA citizens. I can see the argument being made that if US Citizens must report their earnings and pay taxes on their pprofits, then why should foreign sellers earning a profit selling in the US not be subject to the same tax? Because, technically, they already are.

I mean, if I - as a US Citizen - opened up a company in China and earned profits in China, then I would have to pay taxes to the Chinese government on those profits.

But 30% on the gross DOES seem a bit harsh considering the average profit on a sale of any size wouldn't even amount to 30%.

But who knows? The government is getting extra-greedy. In fact, they are getting double-extra-greedy. And grasping too....

Where did your get your source on ebay doing the 30%? All I found was a comment or two on this forum.

I noticed a slight bit of agreement with the idea. Perhaps you're tired of international competition. But I'd say this crushes just about everybody, unless you're an established brand like Buy.com or Tigerdirect etc, because i think from what I've read that everyone can go down any day and have to adopt stealth measures. Then that person gets crushed by the impending doom of the SSN requirement. Things will still get imported (by amazon and tigerdirect) and they'll 'sell locally', and be the only ones with the capacity to sell local because they'll buy in bulk.

all i know is ebay.ca looks a whole lot less attractive than ebay.com :yar:

Like having the wrong country flag on your profile here, it's all how you look at things yes.?

You need to go search via google as to which country will give you the better deal in terms of Customs etc.

It's alot more complex than you are thinking.

Leave your flag as SPAIN. That's where your IP appears to be located.:juggle:

I have no information on eBay doing this. I was just responding to your post. What I do know is....

Customs has not mentioned ANYTHING about any changes in taxes on their website. If a change was coming on January 1st, 2012, it probably would have been posted already.

The IRS is requring payment processors (PayPal and Amazon) to withhold 30% of all payments from any sellers on their US websites who do not provide their SSN's for reporting purposes. Whether this applies to US Sellers only, I am not sure.

And I personally have no problem with international sellers. My response to your post was just a theory based on the information you provided.

Does this include all small sellers. I have only found info talking about the famous 20,000$ and 200 payments.