If you sell on an ecommerce site, then you are likely already aware of two important developments, one of which has been in effect since January 1. The other will go into effect on July 1. If you sell person-to-person online, you may not be aware of both developments.
If you live in the United States, hopefully you have been reporting your gross annual earnings to the IRS. If not, then you will be doing so beginning with tax year 2022. The threshold for sites to automatically report gross earnings to the IRS has been lowered to $600. This low threshold will capture nearly all online sellers. It does include earnings on sites like Facebook as well as funds received through PayPal, Venmo, and all other services. Here is a screen capture of an information page on eBay. Click on the image in order to see it clearly.
The other development concerns shipping to Germany. Beginning July 1, sellers will be required to license their packaging. In order to be compliant, packaging must be recyclable, and sellers will be required to pay an annual fee of 39 Euro. Sellers who ship to Germany without licensing their packaging could be fined 200,000 Euro. So, this is important.
I sell infrequently to Germany, and I am not willing to pay an annual fee of 39 Euro for the privilege of shipping no more than one or two packages to Germany per year. eBay has made it clear that they will disallow sales to Germany for any seller who doesn't comply. However, I have already blocked sales to Germany so that I don't have to worry about it.
Etsy will likely also block sales to Germany, but they are being more vague about it. I believe that Etsy will block my sales to Germany on July 1, but I don't want to take the chance.
Sellers must use calculated shipping on Etsy when they wish to block individual countries. I have reasons for not wishing to use calculated shipping. Since I'm not willing to change my flat rate shipping, I had to remove worldwide shipping as an option. I then entered specific international shipping options for Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. I seldom ship outside of those four countries.
If you live outside of those four countries, I am still willing to ship to you, so long as you don't live in Germany.
2 comments:
What about shipping to Germany via worldwide shipping on eBay. Has Pitney Bowes weight in?
This is a German law that affects everyone shipping items to Germany from everywhere in the world regardless of the service used. It doesn't matter if you use Pitney Bowes or place a bunch of stamps on a package. It also doesn't matter if you use FedEx or UPS. If you send a package to Germany after July 1 and have not paid the fee to register your business and have not completed all of the required steps, then you could be fined 200,000 Euro. That's a pretty steep fine. Are they actually going to fine small businesses, and can they collect? I don't know, but I'm not going to risk it.
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