selling your stuff on Amazon...part three...

apprentice_tycoon

Apologies for not being around to answer queries etc but both of our phone lines went down yesterday (and neighbouring houses too) and we won't be back on line till TUESDAY!!!!! so I'm ebaying and amazoning at the library at the mo and I only have a few minutes left on my alloted time. I can't begin to tell you what a bu33er this is. I won't be able to load up ebay with my Turbo Lister and when my 50+ auctions finish this sat and sun there will be nothing I can do with them till monday morning. So I'll be on line when I can at the library till it's all fixed up

becky004

kaznelson wrote:

What do you do when one of your swaps doesnt arrive on RISI?

I've had 8 in total not arrive and with the exception of 1 I had to accept that I'd lost the books the one person did offer to return my book but I declined. The others basically weren't bothered and 2 told me sorry but it wasn't their problem!

jo_b_2

tabath wrote:

Sorry for seeming thick but whats this RISI people keep mentioning?

Sorry - I think your question might have got lost amidst the conversation. RISI is www.readitswapit.co.uk. It's a site where you can swap your old books with other people's books.

It's really easy to do and really enjoyable. Handy for getting rid of low-value books that aren't really worth selling on Amazon.

juno

kaznelson wrote:

What do you do when one of your swaps doesnt arrive on RISI?

I had one not arrive, and I offered them a differnet book to replace it.

I also had bad feedback saying another didnt arrive, but they didnt contact me so I didn't do anything.

apprentice_tycoon

larmy16 wrote:

Becky I think our treasured AT will be able to give you more accurate advice than myself. It costs me 1.20 (40p per mile self employed) each time I have to drive to PO, and on occasion have been say four days a week. That soon adds up. Also I spent 3.20 in charity shop the other day. Not one of those books was worth listing!!! :rolleyes: Also I agree with you on the boot sale issue - again no receipts and you certainly dont want the sellers to know you are a seller - I think AT said you just give a rounded figure of what you bought. Hopefully she will be along soon.......:)

I'm back - thank goodness - the phone lines were fixed late last night. I can now cancel my 3 pm booking at the library for an hour computer time, I was very impressed, you can have an hour a day free time on the net and £1 per hour after that.

Regarding buying at boot sales etc. Our accountant (my OH is self employed - in a completely different field to me - so I use the same chap) says that if I buy things in cash with no hope of a receipt than I should fill in a note when I get home and treat it as petty cash and enter it on the spread sheets as such. I also keep car parking reciepts from trips into town and he tells me to arrive at a figure for the use of the home, phone, car, petrol, internet charges and of course all the packing costs and printer ink etc. He costs me around £250 in fees per year and to my mind it's money well spent because I really can't be doing with the hassle of these tax returns. I just give him my spread sheets of money in and money out and he does the rest.

As a side note, a fellow antique trader told me that when she has stuff that she really can't sell she gives it to a charity shop, writes out a note saying that the value of the box is £10 or £20 or whatever and the shop manager signs it and she give these notes to her accountant and they come off her amount held as 'stock'.

I decided to do the same as I give an awful lot of stuff away, when I buy at auctions the staff always put good stuff and not so good stuff together as lots on a tray or box so you have to take the bad stuff if you want the 'treasure' on the tray, If they put all the bad stuff on one tray then it wouldn't sell at all and they'd be left with it so you just have to acccept it that way.
So stuff that I can't sell on ebay for one reason or another could be either taken to a charity shop or boot sale, I choose charity shops and now take my note to be signed (the big charity shops made such a red tape fuss when I asked if I could do this so I went to the local hospice and they welcomed me with open arms).

I checked with the accountant that this was all OK and after baffling me with 2 minutes of non-stop accountant speak I got the all clear. So what I'm saying is a 'dead' book is still worth something if you have to give it back to the charity shop

soolin

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

As a side note, a fellow antique trader told me that when she has stuff that she really can't sell she gives it to a charity shop, writes out a note saying that the value of the box is £10 or £20 or whatever and the shop manager signs it and she give these notes to her accountant and they come off her amount held as 'stock'.
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Be careful doing this as nothing can be written off at higher than book value. Obviously it depends on how detailed accounts are kept and whether you audit stock but however you do it you cannot make an artifical loss by disposing of stock.

If you keep very detailed accounts (which I would hardly think worth it for this level of activity) then assuming you buy a box of assorted items, lets say books at an auction you would have to assign a value to each item. So, using the example of 20 books in a box at £20 I can assign a value of £1 per book and then if one book sells for £20 I would make a taxable profit on that book of £19 but still have 19 items in stock showing a book value of £1 each. If I chose to discard them then I could write each book off at book value of £1.

However, if I kept block accounts, which I think most people would do. That box of books would have given me 1 sale at £20 so an even position, and I could indicate that the rest of the stock was discarded.

What cannot be done in either case is to sell the 1 book at £20 then assign a book value to the discarded books at greater than the cost of the original purchase.

The receipt from a charity shop is merely to prove that stock has been discarded, and not sold 'off accounts', that receipt would not need to show a value as that will always remain book value.

Sorry, I assume this is clear as mud, It's been a long while since i was in privte practice and I think I've lost the ability to express myself coherently :eek:

Soo

numberthree

Soo,

I'm definitely not an accountant but I do keep my own accounts and your advice sounds perfectly sensible to me.

If I buy a box of books then I always cost out what each book cost individually and then record that on my spreadsheet. If one sells then I can also include the postage calculation and see how much profit I have made on that particular book. The rest sit in my list as 'stock' and if I did decide to discard them (which I have never done - RISI comes in handy here!) then my stock value would be reduced by the value of that individual book, but I would not make a profit on it - I would show it essentially as given away and I would take a 'loss' in my accounts of the value of that book.

I just declare my trading balance at the end of the year and roll over my stock total - I don't really think the Inland Revenue are bothered about the value of my stock - about £200, but they are in the trading profit I make!!

Hope that helps a little.

soolin

numberthree, I totally agree that the IR are unlikely to be in the slightest bit interested in stock levels. Usually stock is only audited for company or proper trading accounts, and i certainly only keep basic accounts like you.

I have a tally, cost of books in = x, less net sales after post and packing = profit. I don't even have an individual list of books I hold, except for basic information on my PC about which books are in what packing case in storage. I do not keep a stock ledger, just the most basic profit and loss accounts for all my items.

Any books I don't want I just take them to the charity shop (no receipt) or put them in the Oxfam BINs if i visit a local supermarket. By showing a value for stock discarded you are actually increasing your taxable profits on the books that do sell.

Soo

soolin

My accountant friend has just come up with a better way of explaining the disposing of stock problem..this assumes a simple set of purchases less sales equalling profit.

You buy assorted stock at £100, this shows as an expense and forms your 'book value'. You sell £80 of stuff, that means you are not making a profit and are not therefore taxable.

However then you get a receipt from a charity shop showing you have disposed of stock worth £40, you would need to reflect this as a deduction from your book values. This now shows your accounts as Stock purchases £60 (£100 less £40) less sales of £80 giving a taxable profit of £20.

The last thing we should be looking to do is to reduce the value of the stock, as that just increases taxable profit.

So, all I need to do now is sell some more stuff...although I am actually doing OK on ebay at the moment. I listed some books as BINS yesterday and two have sold already.

Soo

kaznelson

heres another question about RISI

When I click the link that takes you to the Amazon page sometimes the book has a differents ISDN Number than the one listed on RISI. Anyidea why?