Delcampe suspended the accounts of most Americans.

I'm lucky because I'm in New York, but Delcampe gave ZERO warning to buyer and sellers alike and suspended (completely locked out) their account if they are from the following states.

Those people got this message:

Your Delcampe account « XXXXXXX » was closed due to the following reason:


Closing of your Delcampe account

Following the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court's decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Delcampe has taken the decision to no longer offer its services in the following States as per today, for an indefinite period of time, in order to avoid any risks of non-compliance with the legislation of these States:

AK Alaska, AR Arkansas, DC District of Columbia, GA Georgia, HI Hawaii, IL Illinois, IN Indiana, KY Kentucky, LA Louisiana, MD Maryland, MI Michigan, MN Minnesota, NC North Carolina, NE Nebraska, NJ New Jersey, NV Nevada, OH Ohio, PR Puerto Rico, RI Rhode Island, SD South Dakota, UT Utah, VA Virginia, VT Vermont, WV West Virginia, WY Wyoming.

We are sorry that we can no longer offer our services for the moment, and we hope to be able to see you on our website in the future, once it will be adapted. Your account will remain closed until further notice. Any outstanding debt to Delcampe will be waived. Should you have any credit left on your Delcampe account, please contact our Customer Service at en@delcampe-support.com with your banking details.

Best regards,
The Delcampe Team


...sooo if you have buyers or sellers in the U.S. whose accounts have mysteriously disappeared this is why.

I'm hoping Delcampe can fix this issue as soon as possible. At this point there is ZERO reasons to list anything from the United States. ZERO.

You need to fix this Delcampe and quick. Even American sellers like myself will be forced to move our sales elsewhere.

Les informations ne sont plus disponibles car le compte de cet utilisateur est supprimé (Règlement RGPD)

Disappeared, closed, suspended...whichever. Anyway you color it this is a major upheaval for anyone who was a seller from the affected states.

Les informations ne sont plus disponibles car le compte de cet utilisateur est supprimé (Règlement RGPD)

I'm familiar with it. This was a hot topic on eBay some years ago and they managed to work it out. I guess Delcampe didn't.

Les informations ne sont plus disponibles car le compte de cet utilisateur est supprimé (Règlement RGPD)

Round about this time, as I remember The US put lots of restrictions on overseas internet trade as well as falling out with the international committee that sorted out "final mile" postage rates. Apparently your president said "They are bad people, very bad people"
For me Posting to the US has been problematic for several years so as a rule I dont.

Why is Delcampe not doing something about this, unless they can tell me differently.

Net result is that sellers lose sales and Delcampe lose fees.

Seems like Delcampe, to use a UK expression, ‘cutting off its nose to spite its face’

Would someone from Delcampe care to explain?

I also have a question directly for Delcampe because I'm as a standstill at this point.

I'm in New York. My account was not directly affected except for a few buyer I was dealing with at this time.

By being in New York, is my account safe? Is New York in compliance? Or is the hammer going to fall at a later date and I'll wake up tomorrow or soon to a closed account?

I don't want to do a lot of work listing new material just to have it come to a screeching halt and have bids and orders stuck in limbo.

A summary of South Dakota V Wayfair lifted from Google:

Wayfair, Inc. South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case that held by a 5–4 majority that states may charge tax on purchases made from out-of-state sellers even if the seller does not have a physical presence in the taxing state.

This seems to explain why sales tax is added to invoices by the 'other' site when sales are made to residents of these states. Seems similar to the European VAT levies. It also partly explains why my turnover has appeared to very recently plummet as I ha a few big buyers in the states affected!

Maybe it's just me, but this seems an awful lot like just ignoring an issue and hoping it will go away, and it hasn't.

It was interesting going through my buyers list to see how many long term customers have had their account closed.

International sales seem to becoming a minefield of tax (IOSS etc) and environmental legislation (LUCID etc). As with all posts of these nature, this is my understanding and may be incorrect.

Gone are the days when you could stick a customs label on and be 100% sure you had done your duty to cover every law as the importer was responsible for the receiving of the parcel legally. Offshore Business to Customer sales are increasingly being regulated in a number of countries.

In this case, US sales tax is a mess as it can be at state, city and county level ( Lien (https) is a summary, but cant vouch for accuracy). Most states have a minimum $ value and/or number of transaction to apply which hopefully most of us are under if you have not already registered. If you have not, and are at risk of going above the limits this ban could actually make you compliance with US tax law easier.

Governments have cottoned on to the fact that not all sellers on sites can (or want to in some cases) to keep up with 195 country's individual laws, let alone the states/regions within them.

Marketplaces have largely not assisted sellers with compliance with any of these unless legally required to due to themselves not being experts, and the risk of getting it wrong and getting sued themselves by the seller.

Governments have also realised its difficult to chase individual international sellers not in compliance but marketplaces are a lot easier to sue as there are a lot fewer of them, and are a juicier target so have started making them jointly and severally liable to force marketplaces to provide assistance to increase compliance. This is what I believe is happening here, as previously happened for tax collection(e.g. UK VAT) and environmental compliance (e.g. LUCID in Germany) for international sales.

On the plus side, this ban could be short lived if Delcampe consider it economically viable to fix. Delcampe already have systems in place for tax collection for the UK and EU. Its a matter of applying the correct rates to the US sales tax regime which they could do with a link to a compliance provider, and registering where applicable with the relevant authorities.

The law requires sales exceeding $100000 or 200 retail sales be subject to the tax. I'm not sure but I doubt that any stamp seller from these states meets that threshold here on Delcampe. Someone has not read the Supreme court judgement and should reconsider this move.

That is fundamentally correct however there is an interesting caveat. Before someone is obligated to collect sales tax for out of state purchases, the business must meet a minimum annual threshold for sales in that particular state. These thresholds vary but are always in the hundreds of thousands of us dollars. Wayfair, being a very large online presence, almost certainly meets these thresholds which explains why these case made it to the Supreme Court. I will never meet any of those thresholds so being located in Texas, I never have to collect out of state sales taxes on anything I sell. Hipstamp has managed this issue well and seemingly easily. Don't know why this was the Delcampe solution.

My regular customers from the USA were also banned and their accounts were blocked indefinitely. And now I can't sell my lots in Germany at all.

Dear members,

Following the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court's decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Delcampe has taken the decision to no longer offer its services in the below States as of April 28th 2023, and this for an indefinite period of time:

AK Alaska, AR Arkansas, DC District of Columbia, GA Georgia, HI Hawaii, IL Illinois, IN Indiana, KY Kentucky, LA Louisiana, MD Maryland, MI Michigan, MN Minnesota, NC North Carolina, NE Nebraska, NJ New Jersey, NV Nevada, OH Ohio, PR Puerto Rico, RI Rhode Island, SD South Dakota, UT Utah, VA Virginia, VT Vermont, WV West Virginia, WY Wyoming.

We thank you for reaching out to us about this. We hear that many of you are feeling very frustrated with this decision right now, and we totally understand.

You're right — we should have sent an email sooner, informing our USA members. Although it doesn’t fix things, we’d like to shed some light below on what led to this abrupt decision.

To put things simply, to monitor individual international sales regarding tax compliance, governments have put the onus on marketplaces to verify compliance and transmission of the value and the number of transactions happening. In the USA, sales tax is quite complex as it can be levied at the State or county level, each having its own threshhold on top of having different requirements for each type of item. Simply put, as things stand today, it is not technically and economically viable for Delcampe to make the necessary changes to stay in compliance with these ever-increasing requirements.

To avoid any risk of non-compliance with State laws we had to act quickly, which led to the sudden closure of several accounts. It was with a heavy heart that we had to take this decision and we’re saddened by it, as we know several of the impacted members personally and have cultivated excellent relationships with them over the years.

Again, we are sorry that we can no longer offer our services for the moment. We will continue studying the possibilities for the future and will of course keep you updated, should new elements arise. It is our hope that we may open the website again to our American friends and collectors.

Hello Dimitri,
Thanks for getting back to us with some information. "Which led to the sudden closure of several accounts" is a gross understatement since that accounts for 23 states plus DC and Puerto Rico.

Many of us who also have sold on eBay currently or the recent past are familiar with the tax issues concerning Internet sales as eBay fought this change, but ultimately complied. I do understand that it's a daunting task to make sure all the different taxing bodies in the U.S. are collected and paid correctly, but aren't there third party solutions that work with marketplace solutions like Delcampe? eBay and AliExpress have figured it out.

Also and this is very important - you didn't suspend the accounts of 27 other states. Does this mean you ARE collecting the taxes for New York, California, Florida, Washington and the other states that haven't been locked out yet? OR at some point soon will those accounts be closed too? I'm in New York and I don't want to list new material today just to have my account suspended / closed tomorrow. I need an answer to this in order to proceed here or look at other marketplace venues.

Regards.

Are the tax rules different in NY state?

Beats me, but there's definitely taxes. Same with California and most other states. Only a handful of states have zero sales taxes like New Hampshire and Delaware.

In a brief email correspondence with Cecilia (Delcampe.net) who parroted the same info from Dimitiri it doesn't seem Delcampe doesn't collect sales tax from any of the states in the U.S.

What's to say that other states like New York, Florida and California won't be blocked from Delcampe at no notice?

Yea, looks like I'm not listing new material here and looking elsewhere. I have ZERO confidence at this point. Once my current auctions are over - time to move elsewhere. My Delcampe will figure things out and getting working again. Other non-U.S. selling platforms have figured this out and makes it work.

It is not only US sellers that have been hit by this.

I have several big buying customers who have had their accounts suspended in the areas affected.

As the OP has already stated this has not impacted other similar internet sales/auction sites who will be the main beneficiaries as the suspended members are forced to take their business elsewhere.

Hello,

We understand your emotion following our decision to stop our services for the moment in 25 states. Once again, we are sorry to have been forced to make such a decision, but please remember that we are a small company of about 30 people with a passion for collecting, and that we do not have the same resources as a company with thousands of employees. Our core business is to facilitate exchanges between collectors so that everyone can find the jewel that they love.

In the states where our services are still available, we do not see any risk of non-compliance because we are very far from the reporting thresholds. We have stopped our services in states that require tax capture from 200 transactions regardless of the amount of those transactions. It is therefore not planned to close the accounts of users in other states such as NY, CA and TX

For more information about nexus as a remote seller or as a marketplace, here are two very useful articles:

Lien (https)

Lien (https)

So what is the threshold for say New York?

Never mind, I found New York via your link.

New York

Enforcement date:
June 1, 2019

Summary:
A remote marketplace provider that made or facilitated more than $500,000 in gross sales and 100 transactions in the state in the preceding four quarterly periods is required to obtain a certificate of authority, collect sales tax, file returns, and remit tax on all sales into the state. All in-state marketplaces are required to collect tax on all sales in the state.


So if the state of New York, if all the collective sellers in the state sell more than $500,000 gross in four quarters we're screwed?

Correction: Collective BUYERS in the state sell more than $500,000 gross in four quarters we're screwed?