Rant. "Private" business sellers (again...)

juju11_2

Hi Squee. Wish I had never answered the OP's original post. Am feeling a bit battered now! It was not my intention to imply all people on benefits are scroungers etc.

Ames

Just out of interest, if I buy some books at a car boot sale for 20p each which I want to read myself, and then decide I don't want to keep them and sell them on for 50p each, where would I stand legally? I'm disabled and on benefits.

custardy

Ames wrote: »

Just out of interest, if I buy some books at a car boot sale for 20p each which I want to read myself, and then decide I don't want to keep them and sell them on for 50p each, where would I stand legally? I'm disabled and on benefits.

you bought them to read
so after reading they are yours to sell with no tax

custardy

squee wrote: »

Just thought I'd wade right into this bloodbath with a couple of musings:

1) If you're a reasonably high volume seller - which I assume most businesses would be - don't you get a much better rate of insertion/ final value fees?

2) Re scroungers/dole bums/no'er-do-wells - not all of those out of employment are the aforementioned. Thanks to the economical mess that the country's currently in there's stacks of people who are desperately trying to find employment. Today it was announced that 75,000 people applied for the 30,000 seasonal temp positions offered by Royal Mail!

S.

so not even 3 people for each job
thats not high is it?

TurkishDelight

There's always a lot of confusion when this comes up, but this link explains it best:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/guidance/selling/examples.htm

kprigg

I am a housewife, with children. I clean an office in the evening & earn well below the £6000 threshold.
I am registered with HMRC (it was one of the first things I did once I started) as I believe that as I am earning money I need to declare it. Its no big problem - online once a year I fill in my tax return & then thats it.
I sell only personal items on ebay, but if I were to sell as a business then I would declare this aswell.
In my opinion its not worth the hassle of not declaring, getting found out, then potentially having to pay fines.

juju11_2

Hi kprigg.

May I ask you what you actually pay to hrmc annually? Understand if you'd rather not say. Thanks.

juju11_2

TurkishDelight wrote: »

There's always a lot of confusion when this comes up, but this link explains it best:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/guidance/selling/examples.htm

Thank you. I imagine if I brought stuff to sell specifically on eBay I would be closest to the example number 3 'carmen'. Can't imagine I would make her profits and I would not go over the £61k vat threshold so as long as hrmc are made aware why should I register as a business seller when I sell my own old possessions 99% of the time?

TurkishDelight

juju11 wrote: »

Thank you. I imagine if I brought stuff to sell specifically on eBay I would be closest to the example number 3 'carmen'. Can't imagine I would make her profits and I would not go over the £61k vat threshold so as long as hrmc are made aware why should I register as a business seller when I sell my own old possessions 99% of the time?

A lot of people (ourselves included) keep business and personal accounts seperately. A business seller has different obligations and liabilities than a personal one. However paypal cover much of that with their protection, so for genuinely a few items a year I can't see too much trouble- techincally you could get your listings removed/account suspension etc. if someone reports it.

Personally I would provide the same sort of stuff that a business seller has to do- full contact info and returns on buy it now.

boombap

JuJu - nothing was directed at you personally - I just meant that at the moment there seems to be a lot more people of work due to redundancy rather than just trying to 'screw the system'.

Custardly - believe it or not it the comment was not an anti Royal Mail comment. I get the impression that you feel rather persecuted on these boards but I can assure you not from me - I've defended the plight of the postman many times.

To answer your comment though, I personally do think that the amount of people applying for the job was high considering the sort of job it is (ie extrememly short term).

S.