These concerns came about because some sellers were adding GST to the final price of an item which could be considered misleading and deceptive conduct and accordingly in breach of consumer protection laws.

We’ve been taking on board your feedback and wanted to provide you with some additional information that we hope is of assistance to you.

Under the modified policy, sellers who are required to be registered for and charge GST must include the GST component in the final price of the item, meaning that they must not add the additional 10% on account of GST after the buyer has won the auction or purchased the item using Buy It Now. Accordingly, for sales covered by this Policy, 1/11th of the final price of the item is considered to be the GST component.

As an example:

Final price at Auction End = $11.00
1/11th of $11.00 = $1.00

In this example the seller must set aside $1.00 out of the final price of the item for GST.

Some of you have asked about the ACCC’s role in relation to the modification. eBay works closely with regulators both in Australia and throughout the world to help ensure the best possible trading experience for the eBay community, and this Policy modification is no exception.

The ACCC is a national law enforcement agency in Australia which enforces consumer protection and fair trading laws, and promotes competition in the marketplace. Among the areas it administers, the ACCC aims to ensure that consumers are not mislead or deceived as to the final prices and true costs of items. The ACCC has published several guides on GST-inclusive pricing, and have provided examples of what is considered acceptable practice. As an example, the ACCC has said that stating “$125 + GST” or “$125 + 10% GST” is not acceptable and may possibly be in breach of consumer protection laws. Other industries are facing similar issues with respect to GST-inclusive pricing.

If you haven’t already seen the ACCC’s News Release with respect to the Policy modification, you can obtain a copy here: http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/608311/fromItemId/2332

In the release, the Chairman of the ACCC Mr Graeme Samuel says:

"Once the ACCC contacted eBay in order to raise its concerns about GST exclusive pricing on the eBay Australia website, eBay offered to change its GST policy in order to provide certainty for all users of the website. The ACCC believes this outcome will reduce confusion for all eBay customers and ensure that eBay sellers are competing on equal terms".

We’re also pleased to let you know that we’ve added some additional information and FAQs in the GST Policy, in response to your feedback. Please refer here for an updated version of the Policy.

Remember, this policy only applies to sellers who are required to be registered for and charge GST. If you’re unsure whether you’re required to do this, please contact the Australian Tax Office (www.ato.gov.au) or your legal or tax adviser.

The policy will come into effect on Monday, 13 June 2005.

Thank you for your understanding, and please do continue to provide us with your feedback.

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Please note that this will not affect My eBay for registered members. Guests will have to register prior to bidding, listing, and accessing all other registration-required features. If they choose to register, their Watched items will be transferred to their regular My eBay automatically.

For more information about My eBay for Guests, please see our Help page.

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This GST policy only applies to those sellers who are required to be registered for GST, and accordingly, does not apply to those members who are not required to be registered for GST.

If you are a seller who is required to be registered for and pay GST, you must ensure that the GST component is included in the price of the item from the time it is listed. You must not add GST on top of the final bidding price or Buy It Now price once your item has been won or bought. This means that all listings on eBay are considered to be GST inclusive, where GST is applicable to the transaction. It is the seller’s obligation to ensure that they are meeting all obligations with respect to GST.

We are aware that many sellers required to be registered for GST already include GST in their prices, in accordance with eBay’s previous recommendations.

eBay’s GST policy now requires this as a compulsory condition of listing. We have made this change after liaising with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and receiving member feedback.

This means sellers who are listing on eBay from 24 May 2005 and that are required to charge GST will need to set aside 10% of the final value for GST purposes. The 10% must not be added afterwards by the seller.

You should also note that sales to overseas buyers (exports) are considered GST free. Where GST is included in the price of an item and your winning bidder or purchaser is located overseas, you may consider refunding the GST component of the item’s final value to the buyer or reduce your postage and handling accordingly, in order to subtract the GST component from the final value.

For more information, please refer to eBay’s GST policy or contact Customer Support via the online webform.

You may also wish to visit the websites of the ACCC and the Australian Taxation Office.

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In the next few days, improvements to the invoice and View Account Status pages will make it easier to locate and sort subscription credits such as free trials, promotions, and discounts on other purchased services.

Here’s a brief description of the changes:

• Changes to the invoice—Sellers will now be able to find the Discounts section containing the subscription credits immediately after the Monthly and One-time Fees section containing the subscription fees. These two sections will be at the end of the invoice, after the Transactions section that contains insertion, listing upgrade, and final value fees.
• Changes to View Account Status pages—On these pages, sellers sorting transactions by Fee Type will now see subscription fees and credits grouped together. A subtotal will be provided for all subscription fees.

You will begin seeing these changes on the View Account Status pages in the next few days. You will see these changes appearing in your invoices for the next billing cycle (May 31st or June 15th, depending on your billing cycle).

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Favourite Sellers
In the next few weeks we will add a “Most Recent Sellers” feature to your Favourite Sellers section in My eBay. Here you will see the sellers you have had activity with in the past 60 days, and you will be able to add any of these sellers to your Favourite Sellers list in bulk.

You will also be able to add Notes to your Favourite Sellers.

Favourite Search Emails
The number of items shown in the Favourite Search email will be increased from 10 to 20 in the next few weeks. You will also start to receive a reminder email when one of your Favourite Searches is about to expire.

Adding/Removing Status Icon Columns
Also you will be able to add or remove the status icon columns within My eBay if you would like. The status icons are the symbols on the right-hand side of each transaction that “light up” when certain actions have taken place (for example, when your buyer has paid, or your seller has left feedback for you).

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Two changes that make the General Announcement Board easier to use include:

• Quickly Scan Posts by Title - To help make sure you see the news that is most important to you, you can quickly scan the board for titles that interest you. Click the titles of your choice to view the full text.

• Archives now available - To make it easy for you to refer back to past announcements, we'll also be archiving announcements. You can get to these archives from links in the left navigation bar.

Have fun trading on eBay!

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To do so, click here and choose the “Edit” option. You will then be able to select “Delete My Page”.

If you choose to delete your About Me page, you will still be able to create a new page at any time.

About Me pages give you a space to tell other members about yourself, your business or your collections.

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Adding your item’s photo to the gallery enables potential buyers to preview your item instantly in the Listings view. Use a gallery photo to help attract more buyers and a higher price. On average, listings using Gallery attracted 72% more bids than listings that used no listing upgrades.*

Price promotions on eBay.com.au only happen every once in a while, so make sure you take advantage of this opportunity. For more information, see eBay’s price promotion page.

Have fun trading on eBay!

*This represents an average based on data from June 2004 transactions on eBay.com.au. No representation is made that a seller's final price, number of bids or conversion rate of a specific item will increase by the average percentages noted above.

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Manage My Store:
The “Manage Your Store” section has been renamed to “Manage My Store” and has been redesigned to make it easier for Store owners to use.

The new Manage My Store section has:

• Better integration with My eBay
• New summary pages to give you an at-a-glance view of your Store activity
• More visible Store announcements so that you can keep up-to-date on all the latest news, feature releases and updates

We hope that these enhancements to Stores will improve your selling experience on eBay.

Happy Trading!

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This new feature is an effort to simplify the process of reporting listing violations to Australia's customer support team. The major change is the inclusion of a link at the bottom of the item page that allows members to report the item.

The link will open a report to customer support and the item number the member is viewing will be automatically populated on the webform, eliminating the need to remember the item number.

The "Report this item" link will appear on the left side of "Printer friendly page" at the bottom of listings.

This feature is only available on eBay.com.au

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• One group of databases was unavailable from 12:33 AEST until 15:10 AEST. Since the items in these databases were unavailable for more than 2 hours, eBay will credit all fees associated with these listings. In addition, eBay has extended these listings by 24 hours and added an additional two hours to the credit and extension period.
• The second group of databases was unavailable for less than 2 hours, from 12:33 AEST until 14:15 AEST. Since these items were unavailable for less than 2 hours, eBay will credit all listing fees associated with these listings, but will not extend the listings. We will also add two hours to the credit period for these listings.

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We appreciate your patience.

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As part of this effort, we are making changes to the Compilation and Informational Media Policy on eBay.com.au (and all other eBay sites) to require all sellers to list their informational items in the Lots More > Information Product categories on the site they choose to list. The change to this policy has already been made live to site, and the categories will be live to site by May 10th. Sellers will be expected to list these items in the designated category from this date onwards. Listings found outside of this category will be considered in violation of this policy and violating listings will be cancelled. Additionally, violating sellers may be subject to suspension.

To view the Compilation and Informational Media policy in its entirety, please click here.

To access eBay’s marketplace policies in entirety, please click here.

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This month’s major changes are in:

• Beauty & Health
• Business & Industrial
• Computers & IT
• Home, Lifestyle, & Baby
• Sporting Goods

These changes will happen overnight between 9th and 10th May. We strongly encourage members to pay careful attention to which categories have changed and to update Turbo Lister. Existing listings may be moved as categories are split, moved, or renamed.

We always welcome community suggestions and incorporate them wherever possible. To submit a suggestion to eBay click here.

Happy Trading!

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PayPal enables anyone with an email address and a credit card to easily send and receive secure payments online. PayPal, an eBay company, is the global leader in online payment solutions with more than 1 million accounts in Australia, and over 70 million accounts worldwide.

For more information, see eBay’s Promotion Page.

Authorised under NSW Permit No. TPL05/3963; VIC 05/1362; SA T05/1455; ACT TP05/1486; NT NT05/1223

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