IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tul/wpaper/1106.html

Do eBay Sellers Comply with State Sales Taxes?

Author

Listed:
  • James Alm

    (Department of Economics, Tulane University)

  • Mikhail I. Melnik

    (Department of Commerce, College of Business Administration, Niagara University)

Abstract

The rapid growth in online commerce has harmed state sales tax bases. However, the extent of this base reduction is difficult to estimate. In this paper we collect our own data from eBay.com on a "representative" commodity classification and a "typical" day. Our data consist of nearly twenty-one thousand eBay listings generated by over seven thousand individual sellers with over ninety-three hundred buyers. We find that overall eBay seller compliance is quite low but that compliance by established sellers is significantly higher. Given that established sellers account for the bulk of online commerce, the estimated revenue loss from eBay seller noncompliance may be relatively small.

Suggested Citation

  • James Alm & Mikhail I. Melnik, 2011. "Do eBay Sellers Comply with State Sales Taxes?," Working Papers 1106, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tul:wpaper:1106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1106.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2011
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James Alm, 2012. "Measuring, explaining, and controlling tax evasion: lessons from theory, experiments, and field studies," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(1), pages 54-77, February.
    2. James Alm & Mikhail I. Melnik, 2012. "Does Online Cross-border Shopping Affect State Use Tax Liabilities?," Working Papers 1206, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    3. Argilés-Bosch, Josep M. & Somoza, Antonio & Ravenda, Diego & García-Blandón, Josep, 2020. "An empirical examination of the influence of e-commerce on tax avoidance in Europe," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    4. James Alm & Kyle Borders, 2014. "Estimating the “Tax Gap” at the State Level: The Case of Georgia's Personal Income Tax," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 61-79, December.
    5. James Alm, 2019. "What Motivates Tax Compliance?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 353-388, April.
    6. Annabelle Doerr & Sarah Necker, 2021. "Collaborative Tax Evasion in the Provision of Services to Consumers: A Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 185-216, November.
    7. David R. Agrawal & William F. Fox, 2017. "Taxes in an e-commerce generation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(5), pages 903-926, September.
    8. James Alm & Keith Finlay, 2013. "Who Benefits from Tax Evasion?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 139-154, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tul:wpaper:1106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicholas Lacoste (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detulus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.