
An Open Letter to PayPal - Or How PayPal is Stopping Me from Lodging My Tax - MatCarpenter
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112726038360301567381/posts/94ApseNCASN
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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.

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dangrossman
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.

~~~
citricsquid
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?

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petercooper
As a PayPal user, I find this sort of issue more alarming than the usual
temporary hold stories :-( That said, there should always be a second set of
backup data for transactions you process.

You can lean on the receipts and transaction data stored by your chosen
shopping cart or similar system. Even if the taxman won't accept these stats
as authoritative, they're a good placeholder.

If everything is done with Buy Now buttons, though, things get a lot more
difficult as the only remaining transactional record are the e-mails PayPal
sends you which will be pretty tricky to collate.

Darren should also look into PayPal's various APIs (sadly there are so many..)
though, as there's probably a way to slurp the transactional data one by one
but _programatically_.

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thinkcomp
Every time I see a PayPal horror story, I think, "if only these people were to
write to their representatives in Congress about the laws that allow PayPal
and the banks to main their monopoly, something might actually happen." PayPal
isn't going to change.

There's a mobile payments hearing in Congress on March 22nd. (See
[http://financialservices.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx...](http://financialservices.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=284912)).
The witness list is closed and my guess is that no startup is represented. If
you're interested in making your views known, e-mail me and I'll get you in
touch with the right people.

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jvdh
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.

~~~
dangrossman
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.

~~~
jvdh
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?

~~~
dangrossman
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.

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squadron
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.

~~~
chapel
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+.

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

