Claiming Ebay and Paypal fees

hubb

I am in my first year of a business seller and although I don't make much a month I was wondering how much of my Paypal and Ebay listing/selling fees I can claim back when I do my tax next year.

Thanks.

martindow

You can set off all of the costs on your sales to reduce your taxable income. It's amazing how all of the incidental expenses add up - fees, packaging, postage, 40p/mile car expenses, etc. You may well find there is no profit at all when you work it out!

soolin

All your expenses can be offset against your profit, so that includes ebay and paypal fees plus all your packaging and printing costs etc.

judywoody

Sorry to dig this out again - I have a brief question!


I know I can offset ebay and paypal fees against tax. But I am a bit confused now.

Say (to give an simple example) I sell something for 10£ and charge 2.50 £
p&p. I have an insertion fee from ebay of 10 p and a final value fee of 1 £ from Ebay and 63 p from PayPal.
That's a total of 1.73 £ that I can put against tax. On top of that I have postage costs of 2.50 £.

Now when I do my tax return, how much will I put on it?
Will I declare 12.50 £ and then claim £ 4.23 in expenses or will I declare 8.27 £ and not mention the expenses? Sorry, this is a complete beginners question and might sound daft. But I am not sure how to work this out..

soolin

I show the full amount received, so the £12.50. I then have seperate postage columns showing total postage paid or stamps bought , a colums showing fees and a colums for other items like packaging, boxes, bubble wrap etc.

Sorry, I'm not explaining this very well- but I don't do a seperate calculation for each item, I lump it all together and come up with one figure. So its gross total income, less all the paypal and ebay fees, less all the postage costs, less all other allowable expenses.

To check on my own profit for my own peace of mind i do test runs where I do work out exactly what profit margin I have on certain items to make sure I never make a mistake and end up out of pocket.

MyOnlyPost

Have you looked at a tax form? When you do you will see there are boxes you need to fill in.

It's a good idea to keep monthly accounts (weekly if you sell lots) as it's easier to find mistakes whilst they are fresh in you mind. You don't need to keep a record of the commission you pay on each individual sale, just your 12 monthly eBay invoices will do. You can do the same in Paypal and just need the monthly figure for fees x12.

**Edit

I have a simple spreadsheet I set up myself. On 1 sheet I have my stock and what it cost me. This enables me to track margin when I sell it and keep note of which lines sell

I have a second sheet on which I track all current sales. This allows me to see what profit figure I have for the month to date and finally a 3rd sheet which I enter the monthly numbers on, so on the 1st of Dec I entered total sales for Nov (inc p&p) Less eBay fees as per Nov invoice, Less Paypal fees, Less postage costs, Less any other costs such as packing materials. This allows me to see profit for year to date at a glance. On the 5th of April I can then add to my sheet costs such as electric, internet charges, petrol, home office etc for the year to give me an annual profit figure

judywoody

Thanks that's great! Just one more question - I can't find an overview of the paypal fees on my account. They deduct it with every single item but I can't find an overview of all the money deducted within a month.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

You can download your Paypal history for any particular date range right back to when you opened the account, personally I keep a spreadsheet of postal payments and bank transfers and then pull the Paypal history which gives every single balance affecting transaction including a breakdown of the fees, plus also shows refunds, fees they give back to you, reversals and payments sent.

I sort the data is several sections, run a few totals and have all the data I need for eBay sales and Paypal fees. The eBay invoices can be found under the 'Account Tab' of your My eBay under the Seller Account link and I think go back 18 months.

judywoody

I just tried to do that - Unfortunately I can only see the total received (on the spreadsheet) and I just rang paypal and they told me I have to take the total amount of transaction and work out the costs (3.4 % + 20 pence per transaction) or go into every single transaction. On top of that, I receive money in Euro and they deduct it, once I receive the money so I can only see what they deduct in Euros. Which means I have to work it out myself..great...:-(

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Paypal are incorrect, if you go to your Paypal account and hover the mouse over the History tab and click on Download History from the drop down menu, from here you can type in a date range and request a log. This will certainly show a breakdown of the fees as I use it every quarter for the VAT return.

A bit off topic but if you take more than £1500 a month be sure to apply for the merchant rate, if you drop below £1500 the fees go back up to 3.4% but will reduce automatically once you go over £1500 again.

judywoody

Ok, I just tried that - It only shows me a total received AFTER deduction of the fees. I tried to download various logs (comma delimited, tab dilimited) but they don't show me the fees. Could it be that you can only get a breakdown if you have a business account? I only tried to do it with my private account...