The Australian Taxation Office has now asked eBay to hand over details of over thousand top Australian eBay sellers. What they are particularly interested in is the non payment of GST (the equivelent of our VAT) on eBay sales. The problem seems to have arisen is because eBay run its Australian operation from Bern in Switzerland. Because of this eBay does not have to either register for GST or include GST on their invoices.
Many sellers claim that they assumed that GST was charged on their invoices and have claimed back these payments from the ATO. A spokesman for eBay said it was the responsibility of the sellers to resolve problems over their GST payments.
"For people to say that we didn't point out to them that there is no GST on eBay invoices is an attempt to shift the blame on to us instead of their own accounting practices," the spokesman added.

There are currently about 5 million registered eBay sellers in Australia.