Taxman tracking eBay - tax robot of doom

--Tony--

The tax man has caught up with ebay sellers:

the UK taxman has unleashed a £250,000 "web robot" to track down VAT-dodging high-volume eBay traders who have absent-mindedly forgotten to register for Value-Added cash extraction.

Will be a lot of sellers facing big bills!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/27/ebay_vat_robot/

rdwarr

About time too.
Many legitimate UK businesses are unable to compete with the prices the smugglers charge.
The threshold for VAT registration is a turnover of around £1200 per week. The number of "Trusted Power Sellers" selling two or three times that amount who are not registered is astounding.

milliejon

Looks like we're better off than the Australians though. Everyone selling on Ebay there has to pay 10% tax on everything they sell.

--Tony--

I don't know why the government have left it so long?

LongDongDave

"£1m a year in extra VAT and force an extra 20 businesses to register for the tax".

Got to be more than that!

rainbowsox

LongDongDave wrote:

"£1m a year in extra VAT and force an extra 20 businesses to register for the tax".

Got to be more than that!

..not wrong...i think the government could set up another health service with all the tax due to them from ebay if they really looked for it.
It does make me cross when i dutifully declare my earnings, spend ages filling in my tax return, and painfully part with whatever sum legally belongs to the government, then have a look at some of the Power Seller turnovers...:mad:
mind you, the size of some of the turnover i reckon they can probably afford good accountants, so wouldn't pay that much tax anyway...

Alfie_E

--Tony-- wrote:

I don't know why the government have left it so long?

The phrases “government”, “computer system” and “on time” do not go together.