Pay Pal and transferring funds.

Baxteen

Baxteen

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Good morning all you crazy people.

I took a really big Step over the last week.
I decided I was going to sell my Magic the Gathering Collection.

I remember a while ago there was a discussion on MTG not being a good investment. pfft, hear this story.
So I played Competitive MTG for 9 odd years. I had a decent collection of modern staples.
I spent maybe R32 000 over those 9 years buying cards, and more importantly trading cards to acquire the staples in the format Modern.

I stopped playing in early 2013.

Last week I approached the best place to sell the entire collection to in SA. the company is run by friends of mine, and I knew I would get a decent deal.
we spent quite a bit of time talking about it all, and they made me an offer. I know that offer would not be beaten in South Africa.

Unfortunately I knew I had to do a comparison to US sites. I looked around on the major resellers, and decided on a site that has a Downloadable Buy list.
I downloaded the CSV, filled in some cards. do not get me wrong I did not fill out everything I had, just everything I had in one box of unsorted rares. that is it. one box.
Total was 378 cards that I now need to ship to the states. because the offer they made me for that list is just shy of 3 times the offer I was made for the entire collection. but this is mostly due to the Exchange rate.(if I took the value in store credit it would have been almost a $1000 USD more btw)

So now I am going to have a nice amount of dollars sitting in my pay pal account.
now for the questions:

Withdrawing money from Pay pal, is it easier to do with FNB or with ABSA? I can link either card.
should I leave the money in pay pal in USD or move it over into my local account in one go?
Is there TAx that I need to look out for?


Additional Question, but more aimed at people familiar with MTG:
Should I have taken store credit, bought myself some Power, and then shipped the power to a friend in the states and have him sell it to a different store for Cash money that he would then transfer to me? or maybe even just buy 4 or 5 pieces of Power, ship them here, hold on to them for a year or two, when tey have gone up to over $1000 USD per card and the Rand has tanked more?
 
Baxteen said:
Withdrawing money from Pay pal, is it easier to do with FNB or with ABSA? I can link either card.
should I leave the money in pay pal in USD or move it over into my local account in one go?
Is there TAx that I need to look out for?
Click to expand...

I've only used FNB to withdraw PayPal funds before, I've had no issues in the past. Never used Absa for this.

You cannot leave the money in the PayPal account for longer than 30 days, you must move it out into your SA bank account.

Yes, there are tax implications. How much this would be is unknown, I'd talk to a tax consultant about this if you're not familiar with these things.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I've only used FNB to withdraw PayPal funds before, I've had no issues in the past. Never used Absa for this.

You cannot leave the money in the PayPal account for longer than 30 days, you must move it out into your SA bank account.

Yes, there are tax implications. How much this would be is unknown, I'd talk to a tax consultant about this if you're not familiar with these things.
Click to expand...

thanks for the help
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I've only used FNB to withdraw PayPal funds before, I've had no issues in the past. Never used Absa for this.

You cannot leave the money in the PayPal account for longer than 30 days, you must move it out into your SA bank account.

Yes, there are tax implications. How much this would be is unknown, I'd talk to a tax consultant about this if you're not familiar with these things.
Click to expand...

What happens if it's in there longer? Does it go back to the person that put it in there?
 
Akasha said:
What happens if it's in there longer? Does it go back to the person that put it in there?
Click to expand...

I believe they freeze the PayPal account, don't think anything happens to the funds but there will probably be penalties and a headache. I'd prefer not to find out though.
 
Hi

I would say FNB is easier because I have transferred and withdrawn many times.

As for leaving the money in PayPal I had no issues. I left mine more than 30 days and my account didn't freeze at all. So maybe you might want to check on that.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I believe they freeze the PayPal account, don't think anything happens to the funds but there will probably be penalties and a headache. I'd prefer not to find out though.
Click to expand...
Apparently not, they appear to even let you spend the funds via PayPal despite saying you can't, I've read that a few times on various threads.
 
interesting.
I am wondering if I should move all the money into an SA bank accound now, or keep it in PayPal in USD.
I have mailed my Tax advisor, waiting to hear more on how it will all work. the money should be in my PayPal by Wednesday next week
 
weird - I have a paypal account thats over 10 years old. have a positive balance for most of that time and no issue with having to withdraw it to an FNB account.

Maybe it applies to new Paypal accounts opened?
 
naeem said:
weird - I have a paypal account thats over 10 years old. have a positive balance for most of that time and no issue with having to withdraw it to an FNB account.

Maybe it applies to new Paypal accounts opened?
Click to expand...
Where did that money come from though?
 
Mostly from clients overseas paying me for work done on their websites.

generally i just leave the $'s in paypal and use it to buy stuff again. Either goods or software and non tangible stuff.
 
Mostly just agree with what others have said plus:

- leaving money in PayPal for longer doesn't result in any automatic side effect, but you are risking a closer look from the tax man
- w.r.t. FNB vs ABSA, as far as I know PayPal withdrawals are only supported via FNB, you don't need an account with them, but even to get it into your ABSA account you'll need an FNB online profile linking your PayPal account to your ABSA account
- when you register the FNB PayPal profile, you will have the option to grant FNB permission to access your PayPal balance etc ... if you are going to consider things like leaving money in PayPal for longer ... do not tick that box ...
 
I've heard of somebody that had their account frozen because of this (not releasing the funds within the 30 days) although I can't vouch for how reliable that information is as it was a friend of a friends wife or something.

I've kept small amounts of money in my PayPal account before (stuff under $100) but any large amounts I instantly moved out.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I've heard of somebody that had their account frozen because of this (not releasing the funds within the 30 days) although I can't vouch for how reliable that information is as it was a friend of a friends wife or something.

I've kept small amounts of money in my PayPal account before (stuff under $100) but any large amounts I instantly moved out.
Click to expand...

I've used paypal and fnb since they released the service here and there is no accounts being frozen or anything of the like if you keep money in paypal. I had over $1000 in it for a 6+ month period. You do get emails telling you "the regulation" though and how to extract the money

It's easier to transact than to incur more fees.

First off, they pay you what they buy the dollar at, not what they sell it at, for example, now it's 16.63 that they sell it to YOU for, but they BUY it from you 16.08 (https://www.fnb.co.za/rates/ForeignExchangeRates.html)

Then they charge you a flat rate + % on the transaction as well.

This is all to get your money back (after waiting 5 days) and then when you buy something via PayPal again (like paying for hosting or netflix), you buy it from them at the higher price.

Technically OP won't be evading tax because he does plan on bringing back that money with the profit he will make off of selling Power (whatever the hell that is), so in fact will be paying more tax and fees than he would now bringing the money in and then buying the Power.

Business.

Also, declare it as a gift instead of something weird like a business transaction. You're allowed R500k a year in gifts. Just declare the additional income/gift with sars and be prepared to pay tax on it and you'd be fine.

Spending R1000+ just to pull money out of PayPal and then use it again somewhere else is nonsense. Keep it there, spend it there. They can't do much to you unless you're some kind of millionaire trading and not willing to pay for Zuma's next wife
 
Sorry Sars... technically I wasn't evading tax & breaking the exchange control regulations because I planned to make more money and bring it back into the country later.
Click to expand...

Good luck with that envo.
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
Mostly just agree with what others have said plus:

- leaving money in PayPal for longer doesn't result in any automatic side effect, but you are risking a closer look from the tax man
- w.r.t. FNB vs ABSA, as far as I know PayPal withdrawals are only supported via FNB, you don't need an account with them, but even to get it into your ABSA account you'll need an FNB online profile linking your PayPal account to your ABSA account
- when you register the FNB PayPal profile, you will have the option to grant FNB permission to access your PayPal balance etc ... if you are going to consider things like leaving money in PayPal for longer ... do not tick that box ...
Click to expand...

this is useful information, thank you. so I have to set up with FNB to get the money out, I cannot simply link my CC to the account.
 
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