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An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

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Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#11

Post by dangrossman »

jvdh wrote: post #9

The business of PayPal is to allow you to accept payments over the internet at a reasonable rate. The business of PayPal is not to outsource your financial administration. If you run a million dollar business and you're relying on PayPal to keep the records for your tax, you're doing something wrong.

You cannot produce accurate records without PayPal's reporting, as there is no other way to know what exchange rate was used on a particular transaction, what fees were assessed, what chargeback and dispute fees and reversals occurred, etc.

Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#12

Post by citricsquid »

dangrossman wrote: post #6

If e-mail wasn't getting him anywhere, why hasn't he picked up the phone and called? My experience has been that the people on the phone were more knowledgeable and had more power to work on an account than the people responding to e-mails. And you don't have to wait.

This is so true. Also, I'm not a high level Paypal customer, I have maybe a few thousand every year going through my account and they gave me a "valuable customer" number. I can quite literally dial the number and have a (native English speaking) representative on the other end within 15 seconds. How has he not just called?

Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#13

Post by jvdh »

dangrossman wrote: post #11
jvdh wrote: post #9

The business of PayPal is to allow you to accept payments over the internet at a reasonable rate. The business of PayPal is not to outsource your financial administration. If you run a million dollar business and you're relying on PayPal to keep the records for your tax, you're doing something wrong.

You cannot produce accurate records without PayPal's reporting, as there is no other way to know what exchange rate was used on a particular transaction, what fees were assessed, what chargeback and dispute fees and reversals occurred, etc.

I assume you're doing business, selling goods or some kind of service. I do hope that you check beforehand whether someone pays for their goods/services before you give it to them right? At which point you have an accurate record for that client?

Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#14

Post by dangrossman »

jvdh wrote: post #13
dangrossman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot produce accurate records without PayPal's reporting, as there is no other way to know what exchange rate was used on a particular transaction, what fees were assessed, what chargeback and dispute fees and reversals occurred, etc.

I assume you're doing business, selling goods or some kind of service. I do hope that you check beforehand whether someone pays for their goods/services before you give it to them right? At which point you have an accurate record for that client?

I assume you have not done business and accepted online payments before at any volume, or you would not put forward such a naive argument.

If I had to log in to the PayPal website and manually copy the full transaction details for every payment 50-100 times per day, I would have to hire a full time employee just to do that. They'd also need to manually log in and re-review every transaction any time there is a refund, bank reversal, PayPal claim, chargeback, eCheck failure, etc. There is no way to calculate the resulting changes yourself -- only PayPal knows what exchange rate will apply to a given payment or refund. Merely recording payments will not provide an accurate financial record.

All this to replicate the "generate report" button I click once a month. And I'd still not have accurate information as there is no other place some of the items get reported, like chargeback fees passed on from 3rd party banks to PayPal then to me.

Providing statements is one of the basic responsibilities of any payment processor. They simply have to provide it or you can't accurately file a tax return.

Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#15

Post by nmridul »

When I read it again.

He contacts paypal support from another email id associated with a different paypal account. Paypal support sends him the report for that account and closes his ticket.

While there is no question that paypal has to get its things in order (able to generate the report correctly), but I think the blogger was also responsible for part of the confusion.

Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#16

Post by squadron »

GoodIntentions wrote: post #5
squadron wrote: post #2

For me to read this article I have to sign up for a Google plus account. No go. I'm trying to reduce my daily social media intake, thankyouverymuch. Just keep in mind if you post on Google plus and no where else, you are limiting your audience. I, for one, will not read it.

I read it ok... I don't have a google+ account and have a browser that is pretty much locked down. ( no-script + ad-block + request policy ) Other than allowing google.com in no-script, no action required. Short read, no surprises. - paypal customer has problem, can't get any customer service. There really needs to be some effective competition to PP before these stories stop, I think.

Reading it on an iPhone and it's not allowing me access to the article.

Re: An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax

#17

Post by gwillen »

chapel wrote: post #3
squadron wrote: post #2

For me to read this article I have to sign up for a Google plus account. No go. I'm trying to reduce my daily social media intake, thankyouverymuch. Just keep in mind if you post on Google plus and no where else, you are limiting your audience. I, for one, will not read it.

I am not sure what you are trying to say. There is no requirement for you to sign up for a Google+ account, or a Google account whatsoever. A lot of people post very informative and provocative things on Google+, it is a shame that people would shun them just because it is on Google+.

Reading public Google+ posts on a mobile device doesn't work without a Google+ account. Try it.
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