VAT Question involving eBay

I made multiple purchases yesterday from a German eBay seller's eBay "store." His product descriptions state the the prices shown include 16% VAT. Before making the purchases, I asked him if the VAT would be subtracted from the purchase price since everything will be shipped to me in the USA. The answer was yes. Well, my eBay invoice for the purchases still included the VAT. I sent a message to the seller asking that he recalculate the prices because of the VAT. Today if I start the payment process, I see that he left the prices as they were but reduced the shipping cost somewhat (but he still hasn't directly contacted me since my message). It appears to me that things don't add up, so I'm not sure if I'm calculating the VAT reduction correctly. In Euros, the original total (before shipping) was 496.43. I'm dividing that by 1.16 to get a pre-VAT figure of 427.96, a difference of 68.47. He has now reduced the shipping by 36.47, but it still looks like things are 32 Euros off (68.47-36.47=32). Am I doing these calculations correctly? Thanks to anyone who can clarify VAT calculations.

I'm sure your calculations are right, but I wanted to say why they did it that way. eBay will not allow the seller to adjust the price lower when sending an invoice from their website. That's probably why they adjusted the shipping...it's the only thing that can be adjusted there.

What you can do is ask him to make the proper adjustments and just send you an invoice through PayPal without going through the eBay system. It can still be set up to be an eBay auction payment, but they can put whatever numbers in they like if they do it through PP.

JM-99