The eBay NOligarchy Profile
C
O
N
C
E
R
N
I
N
G
eBay scores 42.13 out of 100 on the NOligarchy scale — meaning it sits below the accountability standard, where 100 represents a company that spends nothing on political influence, extracts nothing from its workers through lopsided executive pay, and carries a clean legal record. A score of 42.13 signals serious concern on two of the three counts: the money flowing to executives and shareholders dwarfs what the company is willing to disclose about its workforce, and its lobbying operation reaches into every corner of Washington.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
32.3
Wealth Extraction
21.3
Playing by the Rules
100.0
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
•
Political Access Grade: 32.34/100. eBay poured $7.42 million into federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), deploying lobbyists across the most sensitive regulatory pressure points in Washington. It runs no Political Action Committee (PAC) — a confirmed zero — but the lobbying operation itself more than compensates for that restraint.
•
Wealth Extraction Grade: 21.64/100. eBay’s CEO took home about $28.5 million in a single year while the company channeled billions into a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — all while its employee headcount is not publicly disclosed, making it impossible for outsiders to calculate a precise per-worker cost of that choice.
•
Playing by the Rules Grade: 100/100. No fines, penalties, or regulatory violations are recorded against eBay across the two-year tracking period — a clean docket on the public record.
eBay ranks 16th out of 21 companies in the Warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers sector. The sector average NOligarchy score is 55.8 — meaning eBay trails the industry baseline by more than 13 points. Since eBay scores below 50 and higher-scoring alternatives exist, readers can find companies with stronger accountability records in the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: A Marketplace Giant That Lavishes Its Executives and Shareholders While Hiding Its Payroll
eBay reported $11.1 billion in annual revenue — enough to place it among the significant players in American e-commerce — yet the sharpest story in its data is not how much it earns but how it chose to distribute the proceeds. The company funneled billions into buying back its own stock across fiscal years 2024 and 2025, handed its chief executive nearly $28.5 million in a single year, and simultaneously spent $7.42 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies on the very rules that govern its marketplace. eBay does not publicly disclose how many people it employs, so no outsider can translate its buyback spending into a per-worker raise figure — but the scale of money flowing to shareholders and the executive suite, set against that silence, is itself a deliberate choice.
eBay's $7.4 million in political spending equals 92 years of median-household income — enough people, one per year worked, to fill 0.5 fully-boarded 737s.
A Lobbying Machine Wired Into Every Corner of Washington
eBay spent $7.42 million on federal lobbying across the two-year tracking period — $1.46 million in 2024, surging to $4.68 million in 2025, and $1.28 million across the first and second quarters of 2026. That dramatic year-over-year jump between 2024 and 2025 is not a rounding error; it reflects a company that intensified its grip on the legislative process as several high-stakes regulatory battles came to a head.
eBay operates no PAC — the confirmed-zero figure means it chose not to run a formal committee for corporate political donations. Executives and staff made $4,600 in personal federal campaign contributions during the same period. The real machinery is the lobbying operation.
Across ten distinct issue areas, eBay’s lobbyists knocked on doors at the House of Representatives and the Senate 81 times each, at the Department of Commerce 25 times, at the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) 24 times, at the Treasury Department, U.S. Customs & Border Protection, and the White House Office 21 times apiece, and at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 10 times. This is not a company making the occasional courtesy call to Capitol Hill. This is a company running a full-spectrum influence operation.
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
81
≈ every 6th business day
SENATE
81
≈ every 6th business day
Commerce, Dept of (DOC)
25
≈ every 20th business day
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)
24
≈ every 21st business day
Treasury, Dept of
21
≈ every 24th business day
11 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, eBay was named in lobbying filings reaching 11 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
The de minimis fight is the central battlefield. The single issue that cuts across the most lobbying filings — appearing under Small Business, Trade, Homeland Security, Postal, Telecommunications, and Taxation categories simultaneously — is the U.S. “de minimis” customs threshold, which allows low-value imports to enter the country duty-free. For eBay, whose marketplace is packed with small sellers and international goods, any tightening of that threshold directly squeezes the business model. Lobbyists cited Executive Order 14324, which suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for all countries. They also referenced the Closing the De Minimis Loophole Act, the End China’s De Minimis Abuse Act, the De Minimis Reciprocity Act of 2023, the Ensure Accountability in De Minimis Act of 2024, and the Import Security and Fairness Act — all of which would restrict or restructure how low-value imports are treated at the border. The enacted reconciliation legislation — H.R. 1 of the 119th Congress, which became Public Law 119-21 — contained provisions directly relevant to de minimis rules for third-party network transactions; eBay’s filings cited this legislation. Filings also referenced the FIGHTING for America Act of 2025, which takes a harder line on trade with adversarial nations. On every one of these measures, lobbyists named the bill — the filings do not disclose which direction eBay pushed.
Counterfeit goods and platform liability are the second major front. eBay’s filings consistently cited the SHOP SAFE Act of 2023 and SHOP SAFE Act of 2024, legislation that would expand liability for online marketplaces that allow counterfeit products to be sold through their platforms. The bills appeared in lobbying descriptions across Copyright/Patent/Trademark, Law Enforcement, and Consumer Issues categories — a company with a direct financial stake in where the line gets drawn between platform and seller responsibility. Filings also cited the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025, referenced four times each in both its Senate (S.1404) and House (H.R. 2853) versions, linking organized theft directly to e-commerce resale markets.
Digital privacy and the app ecosystem round out the agenda. Filings cited the Kids Online Safety Act (in multiple versions across two Congresses), the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, the App Store Accountability Act, the Algorithm Accountability Act, and the SAFE BOTs Act. For a marketplace platform that depends on algorithmic discovery, app store distribution, and consumer data, each of these bills touches the infrastructure of the business.
Tax policy is a consistent thread. Lobbyists cited the Sporting Goods Excise Tax Modernization Act, the Saving Gig Economy Taxpayers Act — which concerns how earnings generated through third-party platforms are reported to the IRS — the SNOOP Act of 2025, and the Red Tape Reduction Act of 2025. Each of these touches reporting obligations that flow through eBay’s payment and seller infrastructure.
Two of eBay’s 18 lobbyists are former government insiders — a revolving door that gives the company direct access to the corridors they once walked. Casey Fitzpatrick formerly served as Acting Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff to Rep. Kelly Armstrong, and as Legislative Director and Counsel to Rep. Mimi Walters, among other roles — placing him squarely in the Congressional offices that shape commerce and tax legislation. Claire Foran previously interned in Sen. Chris Murphy’s office.
eBay’s sole outside lobbying firm, AVOQ, LLC, also registers clients including Amazon.com Inc and Verizon — meaning the same firm that carries eBay’s agenda into Washington simultaneously carries agendas for two of its most consequential rivals and regulatory neighbors.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
eBay
client
AVOQ, LLC
lobbying firm
Amazon.com Inc
also a client
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
also a client
Verizon
also a client
Why it matters: the same firm argues eBay’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens eBay’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
Billions in Buybacks, a Hidden Headcount, and a CEO Paid 158 Times the Median Worker
eBay’s CEO pay ratio is 158:1, according to the SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $28.5 million. The median eBay employee took home $180,276 that year. The gap between those two numbers is not a product of market forces acting on neutral ground. It is the product of a compensation structure that concentrates reward at the top and treats everyone below as a line item.
Then there are the buybacks. eBay spent $3.149 billion buying back its own stock in fiscal 2024 — equivalent to 30.6% of that year’s revenue, meaning nearly one in every three dollars the company brought in went straight back to shareholders via a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. In fiscal 2025, buybacks totaled another $2.5 billion, or 22.5% of revenue.
eBay does not publicly disclose its total employee headcount — which means a precise calculation of the raise that buyback spending could have funded for every worker is not possible. That absence is itself an accountability gap: without a published headcount, no outside observer can hold the company to account for how its spending choices trade off against workforce investment.
What can be stated plainly is this: eBay simultaneously paid $533 million in dividends in fiscal 2024 and $531 million in fiscal 2025 — traditional shareholder payouts on top of the buybacks. The company did not have to choose between its investors and its workforce; it could have paid out more than $530 million in traditional dividends and still directed meaningful resources toward workers. It simply chose not to. Traditional dividends spread returns more broadly across shareholders and are less tightly engineered to move per-share earnings figures. Buybacks, by reducing the number of shares in circulation, mechanically lift Earnings Per Share (EPS) — the same metric that often triggers the performance bonuses that rewarded the CEO to the tune of $28.5 million. The executives who approved the buyback program are among its primary direct beneficiaries.
eBay paid an effective tax rate of 13.5% — 7.5 percentage points below the 21% federal statutory rate that Congress set. The company’s 10-K rate reconciliation identifies the largest single driver of that gap: a Swiss federal rate differential worth negative 4.9 percentage points, reducing eBay’s tax bill by $114 million compared to what it would owe at the statutory rate. Switzerland’s cantonal tax structure added back 2.7 points, but the net Swiss effect still carved a substantial reduction. A withholding tax arrangement in India contributed another negative 1.7 points — $40 million off the bill. Research and development tax credits clipped a further 4.2 points. The enactment of changes to tax laws under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, 2025 — including immediate expensing of domestic research and development and certain capital expenditures — contributed an additional negative 2.8 points. eBay chose to pay 7.5 points less than the rate Congress set. That gap is not an accounting accident — it is a structural decision that shifts real tax burden off eBay’s balance sheet and onto everyone else. On top of that, eBay holds Unrecognized Tax Benefits equal to 13.0% of its pre-tax income — contested deductions it has claimed on its taxes that the IRS has not yet agreed are valid.
Statutory federal rate
21%
This company
13.5%
eBay's effective federal tax rate was 13.5% against the 21% statutory rate — 7.5 percentage points drained away.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket — and a Trickle of Public Subsidies
No fines, penalties, or regulatory violations are recorded against eBay in the public tracking sources across the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026. On this single pillar, eBay’s record is clean.
That absence stands in contrast to the company’s profile on the other two fronts. While eBay directed billions toward shareholders and millions toward Washington lobbyists, governments simultaneously handed it modest public money. According to Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker, eBay received a total of $16,775 in public subsidies across 2024 and 2025, including an $11,938 grant in 2025 and a $4,837 grant in 2024. At that scale, the figures amount to a rounding error for a company reporting $11.1 billion in annual revenue — but they are part of the public record nonetheless.