More Power to the People – Awareness about Legislative Issues is Increasing

With the November elections right around the corner, it's no surprise that voters across the country are paying more attention to the issues that concern them. For eBay sellers, two of the biggest issues are Net Neutrality and the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP).

Back at eBay Live! in June, I'd met Carrie Murchison from our Government Relations (GR) team. Carrie is based in Washington D.C., but this week she's visiting our corporate headquarters in San Jose, organizing a Get Out The Vote event aimed at reminding employees to register to vote in time for the November elections. I caught up with Carrie and asked her about the latest from the world of GR.

One of the things Carrie and the GR team are really excited about is the extraordinary increase in members' awareness of Federal and state legislative initiatives that can potentially affect their eBay businesses. This is becoming increasingly evident at the "Main Street Meetings" that the team regularly conducts in towns across the United States. At the latest one, held last week in Lansing, Michigan, the sixty or so eBay sellers who attended were full of well-informed questions about the legislative issues that could have an impact on their online businesses.   

One of these was Michigan's Single Business Tax (SBT), which has become a hot topic of discussion in the business community of that state. Complying with the rules around this tax poses problems even for the largest corporations, so you can imagine how it burdens eBay sellers. Barry Murphy, one of the experts on this issue from eBay, fielded a lot of questions from sellers on this complex issue. (I'm planning to talk to Barry as well, and blog about eBay's position on SBT.)

Also present at the event was Aashish Tripathi from our Top Seller Management Program, there to listen to sellers' issues in general. A lot of the questions they directed at him had to do with eBay's Trust and Safety Policies. He endeared himself to the crowd by putting a "human face" to a lot of eBay’s policies, and explaining the rationale behind some of them. I hear from our very own Jeff that Aashish (he's on the left in this picture, talking to a seller) is shortly going to be a guest blogger on The Chatter, so stay tuned for his posts.