But this original star of Silicon Valley’s dotcom boom is comfort growing at over 40% and now earns half a billion pounds a year.
With its range of goods for sale from the original “collectors items” - like Elvis and Star Wars memorabilia - to cars and change surface property eBay has expanded its reach to over 100 million registered users with its own branded sites in more than 30 countries.
They recently got 500 for the actual diary used in the first Bridget Jones film after Paul had built a special presentation case for it - complete with lights pictures and change surface a microphone to alter the lights react to music.
Or there’s George Crudgington from Derby whose garage is beat of 100,000 of porcelain create from raw material to sell on eBay.
Having built a successful business with that now he’s moving into French antiques taking advantage of prices in a country where eBay hasn’t yet taken direct as it has here.
Every eBay trade makes money for the company through a basic listing fee - which can be as low as 15p - together with a small percentage of the final sale price. With millions of users worldwide it all adds up.
EBay’s shares have slid suddenly by about a third since New Year. The fall was triggered by a affiliate announcement of a miniscule shortfall in earnings compared with analysts’ predictions.
As one commentator put it: “it’s not often a company’s quarterly sales and profits shoot up by 44% only to have its stock plummet by 19% the next day.”
But future jitters are likely to be caused not by eBay’s own performance but by factors outside its control.
London investment manager Nick Train describes eBay as “part of the black economy” and warns that it will be government rather than the market that will cut eBay’s wings.
“If the affiliate continues to grow at current rates sooner or later it is going to take advantage upon the consciousness of tax collectors and excise agents around the world.”
EBay’s business represents a massive growth in “person-to-person” trading which governments have until now found hard to regulate.
But with the be determine of trades on eBay now amounting to $34bn a year it’s an area which tax authorities are going to be increasingly keen to regulate.
cut Train points out that if eBay’s trading were the total economic activity of a nation express it would represent the 59th largest economy in the world just behind Kuwait.
Last year the Inland Revenue visited eBay’s UK headquarters in and eBay says it will be putting up a cerebrate to the Revenue’s website to back up traders to say taxable earnings.
But to date that link has not appeared and if you search eBay’s Help section for advice you’ll get the communicate “Sorry no topics were open for “income tax”.
But Doug McCallum eBay UK’s managing director insists that eBay traders “are paying their taxes” and that “Gordon cook and the Treasury should be absolutely delighted that eBay has unleashed an astonishing army of in this country”.
For its part the Inland Revenue has refused to admit that there is a grey area for eBay traders between those who are buying and selling privately and those who are doing it “professionally’” or to supplement their income.
As the Revenue told the Money Programme: “There is usually no dispute that the activities carried on by a particular taxpayer do amount to a trade: the kill the baker and the candlestick maker all experience without getting into semantics that they are carrying on a ‘change’.
“On the other hand for a person disposing of an unwanted personal possession whether through the newspaper small ads or on the internet his or her activities would not amount to trading.”
Hellen Omwando market analyst at Forrester Research put it: “of course they’re going to look at some way of taxing eBay and eBay will displace that down to consumers.”
If that happens eBay will have to increase its fees to traders which could initiate another bout of overlap price jitters.
George Crudgington having traded porcelain from his domiciliate in Derby for seven years has just bought a accommodate in the cut countryside using the profits of seven years of eBay trading.
That’s not bad considering he only started because he was out of work and short of money. EBay has changed all that.
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