when i used term buyers premium/tax i meant solely buyers premium (to me it a tax )
I can see how some might interpret BP as a tax
I know when I bid, I do backward math. I want to pay $200, I know BP will equal about $35 on a $165 bid and now I've reached $200
I know that all bidders use something of a similar equation when considering bidding and the costs of shipping, as there has been a direct correlation between raising shipping costs and decreasing values of posters where the cost does make a difference. For instance, I always that for every dollar shipping increases, you lose $1 in bidding on a single item. For people who bid on many items early and not knowing how many they might win, they will decrease their bid $1 across the entire selection
how many times did you not bid on some guy's ebay listing because it says the shipping is $35 from California to NYC? (or whatever your location is etc)
Because of this dichotomy, I haven't raised shipping rates since 2014, even though the post office has increased rates 4 times since then and this is a contributing factor to why I am reducing the number of auctions I'm doing annually. Factually, I'm losing money on supplies & labor with every single package I ship and that is $4 to $8 per package.
Shipping someone's $200 purchase and losing $8.00 on a package is just the cost of business.
Shipping someone's $4 auction win and losing $4.00 is a waste of time & resources
but I digress, tax or no tax, people generally take this amount into consideration when bidding, so it isn't really a complaint. BP is not a hidden factor and when you bid on HA, it tells you what your final bid is with BP before you hit the button during the live online bidding