Ebay account limited, what now?

soolin

Oh the old 'hobby seller' issue again..it's sort of like the way people think there is a such a thing as a common law wife.

A hobby seller is not what people seem to think it is, it doesn't mean you can trade at a profit and get away with it as it is a hobby, it means you sell a few things from your personal 'hobby' collection that you have owned for a while and wish to pass on to buy more. For instance, say I collect silver spoons and decide to sell two or three from my collection that I've had for a while as I have decided that I don't want 'Jersey' one anymore. They sell very well and I see another few Jersey ones at a car boot and buy them knowing I can find th emarket and make a profit, so i buy and then a few weeks later I sell them at a profit.

The first sales from my own personal collection are not considered trading, although obviously if I sold for a huge amount then I would be into capital gains problems. The second set though would be trading. I can't explain it any better than that. Anyway it is not us you need to worry about at all, we don't need convincing only HMRC.

Also, Cash in the Actic was mentioned and yes anyone doing that in real life would be subject to HMRC rules as well. That is a TV programme and a lot of things are missed out or not mentioned, for instance they only ever work on actual profit being the difference betwene purchase price and sale price and thta is of course nonsense. For the sake of the programme they ignore all the seller premium on the sale price, in reality those same goods are actually going for alos smore often than not as seller premiums are jolly high in B and M auction houses.

Strapped

In your shoes re. the tax position, I think taking some professional advice would be appropriate. They may advise you that yes, you do need to declare everything to HMRC, or they may agree with your "hobbyist" stance - but it would be easier to explain yourself to HMRC if this ever came back to bite you at a later date if you could show that you had tried to "do the right thing".