Making Ebay part of your income

hubballi

As I have sold items on Ebay for some time, I am thinking of making it a regular income that could be incorporated into my new self employment as I am solely a Photographer.

Can anyone help advise how I draw the line of it starting to be a business income. For instance, if I want to buy an item for leasure and use money earned from selling on Ebay via my paypal account, how do I account for that kind of thing ? I plan to buy and sell items but also I wish to sell second hand household items that are not strictly business.

As I want to do this as transparently as I can I would appreciate any advice from people who have made similar transitions.

Thanks.

cyberbob

Best advice is to keep your private selling totally separate from your business selling, This stops any confusion with the Tax man. So make sure you have seperate ebay selling accounts as this makes it far easier to track whats business and personal. I also have 2 separate buying accounts

hubballi

I would rather use my current selling account for business as I have a high feedback record.

How do you go about getting 2 Paypal and Ebay accounts ?

jennyjelly

I believe you need a different email address for a second ebay account, You can then either have a separate Paypal account or link it to your existing one.

No doubt more experienced sellers will correct or improve on the above.

soolin

hubballi wrote: »

I would rather use my current selling account for business as I have a high feedback record.

How do you go about getting 2 Paypal and Ebay accounts ?

Definitely seperate out business and private. You'll need a business account to sell on ebay so convert the one you have currently to a business and sell from that. Then open a new selling account for your private sales (that way you don't have to do returns on your private goods). I'd also open a third account for purely buying.

hubballi

And how may Paypal accounts, just the one ?

Surely you can buy and sell with the private account and not just a buying account.

soolin

hubballi wrote: »

And how may Paypal accounts, just the one ?

Surely you can buy and sell with the private account and not just a buying account.

You are only allowed one of each sort of paypal account so a single premier one should be sufficient for all the accounts.

As for buying and selling, never use the same account to do both, keep them seperate. If you end up with a bad buying experience and need to leave poor feedback you don't want a seller buying something from you later and trying to be clever.

cyberbob

hubballi wrote: »

And how may Paypal accounts, just the one ?

Surely you can buy and sell with the private account and not just a buying account.

You could consider a micropayments account id you are selling items less than £10 as it will save you a lot on paypal fees. You are allowed one premeir/business account and one micropayments. You need to open a new one then convert it to micropayments if you wish to have one

https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/

hubballi

I don't want to complicate things more so I will just have an Ebay account for selling and buying and one for selling business. I take it you transfer the money from your Paypal account to your business bank account from items sold on your business account ONLY ? The rest you can transfer to your current account or spend on buying more Ebay items.

One last thing, what if you want to purchase an item from Ebay that will be used for business(ie camera, printer etc) ? How do you claim it back in business expenses at the end of the tax year as it came straight out of your Paypal account and your buisness account will not have seen the money ?

Sorry about the questions but I need to get this right.

hubballi

hubballi

Please anyone ?