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SSN required for seller accounts in the future?
 

Ive been doing alot of business with my stealth accounts. I have almost 10 and its all thanks to this amazing forum. Do you think the day is in the near future that ebay will require you to provide a SSN to do any type of selling. I know its almost impossible to judge but do you think ebay would ever do something like that?

Who knows everything is possible why you so worry right now?

Concentrate on your business and do not worry about things that might not happen

thanks for your reply. and im not "so worried" its just a thought because if that happened then that would be the death of all stealth accounts.

Exactly - no sense worrying about that yet.

I doubt they will do this. They had a ton of resistance getting SSN's/EIN's from those going over the IRS threshhold. That is why they delayed it as long as possible - they were losing customers. That was unavoidable, as it is now the law.

But eBay/PayPal/Amazon will not shoot themselves in the foot by doing that - why would they? The only way I see this happening is if they lose SO MUCH MONEY through fraud, they figure it would be cheaper to lose a certain percentge of their customers by demaning SSN's from everybody.

I just don't see it happening.

Agree with jeffweico

Jeff is right. They know people have stealth accounts, but aslong as they don't cause any actual problems (scams, fraud, etc)... it's just money in the bank for them.

If SSN was required for every account, they would lose ALOT of business. They would fight that requirement in court until the bitter end for sure.

It COULD happen, but I'm not too worried.

Thanks for your input guys. It was just a thought that i have been thinking about for quite some time now since my stealth business is really taking off. That would be a pretty bad day for all of us if ebay started doing this :mod:

There are many things that eB could start for us all to have a "pretty bad day"....you have identified one.

Lets hope it does not come to this and focus more on business

If the day ever comes, the workaround will be the same with the Paypal SSN/EIN request situation. You will just have to incorporate and get an EIN for each stealth account. There will never be a day when they just strickly require that you use only your SSN because then they will loose all the medium to large business customers. I don't know too many CEO's, COO's, or CFO's who would want to provide an SSN and risk subjecting themselves to personal liability for business activity. It would defeat the purpose of legitimizing your business in the first place.

CEO's of smaller businesses have to provide their SSN's a lot of the time - even in a 500 person company - for identity verification purposes. Usually for financial services. Like, just try to get acess to credit reporting without one - will not happen.

Just providing the SSN does not expose the CEO to personal liability unless the contract stipulates it.

Usually, the only way around that requirement is that a company be publicly traded and listed on the NYSE, AMEX or NASDAQ.

if ebay did this they would go out of business. i am sure that stealth accounts (whether or not people realize they are stealth accounts) increase ebay's sales A LOT. the smaller the market gets for them, the higher the prices will be and people buy on ebay for deals not to pay premium prices

Exactly. eBay will do whatever is best for their bottom line. That is what corporations are supposed to do. They do not make moral judgments. They could care less about stealth sellers UNLESS they become a problem. For that matter, they could care less about counterfiets too, UNLESS it becomes a problem for them.

Why do restaurants sell all the fattening food, and meals loaded with fat and sugar? BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE WANT! Cheap food that is tasty. People pay a lot of lip service to healthy eating. They talk about it, swearing that they try to eat healthy, but then they run out and buy a double quarter pounder with cheese, a large fries and a large vanilla shake.

Trust me, if people REALLY started staying away from junk food, McDonald's would be selling much healthier food with lots of fruits and veggies. You'd see commercials for the McVeggie Burger.

If eBay REALLY wanted to stop stealth users, they could do so. But why would they when they are raking in the bucks?

Agreed that small business owner's have to provide their SSN all the time. This is why I stated that this would be a problem for the medium to large business.

Any contract that asks for the SSN of the owner, with the exception of a bank account which is trying to meet patriot act requirements, is binding the owner to a situation of joint and several liability with the business.

My point is if they ever require an SSN like paypal, they will allow an EIN as a substitute to avoid the mass exodus of medium to large business. Therefore we have nothing to worry about.

Thanks guy! Ill be sleeping alot better tonight, that is if i get to sleep...packaging all these goods has taken the better part of my life!

Good night bro and don't forget to pay taxes =}-=}-=}-