best items to sell on ebay?

Pickle_99_uk

HI,
Hubby and I have been selling bits and bobs on ebay for years. I can't tal for selling in bulk but we find that decent branded clothes (all saints, M and S, next etc) usually sell, as do games for consoles (Wii in particular seem to be doing well at the moment) and any niche things (unusualy stuff). Also bundles of kids clothes usually sell but not for a huge amount. Good luck. xxx

Hollyberry

kirstym01 wrote: »

Hi everyone, Happy New Year to you all!

I'm thinking of selling items on ebay as a bit of extra income but I'm not sure what is a good thing to sell...... I was thinking clothing as you can get some good deals on wholesale websites??
I want to do it all properly so I won't be liable for any tax bills in the future, is all this easy to sort?
Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer :rotfl:

HMRC do a brilliant (and free) half day seminar setting out how to manage your tax affairs/NI when you become self-employed. It is good at clarifying what you do when you are both employed and self-employed as in your case. I am not sure whether they offer a seminar near you, but you can find all the details on their website. They advised me to register by phone rather than online, and it was all sorted in five minutes, which amazed me.

Good luck with the new venture.

Hammyman

kirstym01 wrote: »

whoops I actually worded that wrong, wasn't that I dont want to pay tax, I meant I dont want any surprise tax bills in a few months time because I hadn't sorted it properly! Sorry for the misunderstanding!!
I want to ensure it is all done above board, I am actually training to be an accountant so know about keeping accounts (obviously!!) and doing tax returns etc but we haven't got to the point of registering with hmrc which is where I am lacking knowledge!

Registering with HMRC is easy. Pick up phone, give them your NI number, a business name and type of business i.e online retailer.

Well avoiding a nasty tax bill surprise is easy. Simply take 20% of all profit for each week/month (depending on how much you do) and stick it in a high interest account. The interest it earns goes to paying off the tax. Once you've paid the bill you can remove whats left for yourself or leave it in there to put towards the following years.

We live near a post office so haven't got to worry about mileage,

For someone who says they're training to be an accountant, I find the above statement extremely worrying. YOU SHOULD CLAIM ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE TAX DEDUCTIBLE EXPENSE YOU CAN and definitely ALL MILEAGE. HMRC even have rates for walking @ 2p per mile and I sure as hell claim that if I walk to the post office.

Remember that if your business makes a loss on paper (dead easy to make a REAL profit but a paper loss) , as you are also PAYE you would get a tax refund. So for example if you earned £10000 PAYE and your business made a paper loss of £1000, your actual income for tax purposes is £9000. As you paid the tax on the £10000 through PAYE you'd have overpaid so would be refunded approx £200. Being both PAYE and S/E is really easy as all you need to do is fill in the details from your annual P60 from your employer on the PAYE income page of the Self Assessment form.

Crowqueen

Be careful - HMRC apparently don't like people offsetting trade losses against PAYE income too much without genuine evidence you intended to make a profit. You should only do this if you are making a genuine loss - rather than a "paper loss" - as you might get hit with an inspection and then you would have to prove what you were doing was correct.

I would watch what you advise people to do, particularly on a public website.

mobile48

Crowqueen wrote: »

Be careful - HMRC apparently don't like people offsetting trade losses against PAYE income too much without genuine evidence you intended to make a profit. You should only do this if you are making a genuine loss - rather than a "paper loss" - as you might get hit with an inspection and then you would have to prove what you were doing was correct.

I would watch what you advise people to do, particularly on a public website.

Does that mean if you buy items to sell but do not make a profit after allowable expenses (and cannot show an intention to make a profit in the long term) then the HMRC may question whether or not you are a business?

*onlyme*

Best items to sell on ebay? Wrapped Christmas presents...lucky dip by looking at another thread lol

Hammyman

mobile48 wrote: »

Does that mean if you buy items to sell but do not make a profit after allowable expenses (and cannot show an intention to make a profit in the long term) then the HMRC may question whether or not you are a business?

My friends amusement arcade made a trading loss for half a decade and HMRC didn't bother him. Plenty of businesses set up as multiple Ltd Companies with all the bills for the "group" going to one of them for reasons I won't get into but HMRC don't go after them.

kaza

Hammyman wrote: »

Registering with HMRC is easy. Pick up phone, give them your NI number, a business name and type of business i.e online retailer.

Well avoiding a nasty tax bill surprise is easy. Simply take 20% of all profit for each week/month (depending on how much you do) and stick it in a high interest account. The interest it earns goes to paying off the tax. Once you've paid the bill you can remove whats left for yourself or leave it in there to put towards the following years.



For someone who says they're training to be an accountant, I find the above statement extremely worrying. YOU SHOULD CLAIM ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE TAX DEDUCTIBLE EXPENSE YOU CAN and definitely ALL MILEAGE. HMRC even have rates for walking @ 2p per mile and I sure as hell claim that if I walk to the post office.

Remember that if your business makes a loss on paper (dead easy to make a REAL profit but a paper loss) , as you are also PAYE you would get a tax refund. So for example if you earned £10000 PAYE and your business made a paper loss of £1000, your actual income for tax purposes is £9000. As you paid the tax on the £10000 through PAYE you'd have overpaid so would be refunded approx £200. Being both PAYE and S/E is really easy as all you need to do is fill in the details from your annual P60 from your employer on the PAYE income page of the Self Assessment form.

Can I just ask besides mileage, stationary, postage and packaging, ISP charges, phone calls, (obviously ebay and paypal charges) is there anything else that you can offset against your profit? to help keep the paper profit down.

Thanks
Karen

terra_ferma

With clothes you see lots of sellers listing the same stuff, which they got from exactly the same wholesalers.
If you want to make money you need to be imaginative, as the market is rather full of sellers looking for bargains and thinking they can make an easy buck.
If you found the deals on wholesalers websites, so have 100s of other sellers who are selling the same items right now. Some of them probably with 1.5 (=50%) markup until they realise they are actually losing money.
Some brands go for even less what ordinary buyers can source, which makes me think that it may be actual employee with discount and good inside knowledge (a part from the wholesalers themselves often selling directly on ebay).

The UK is a tough market, you need to really find a niche that has some potential, but it's feasible if you know your stuff.
Personally I looked into it and decided that it was not lucrative enough for me.

Good luck!

macfly

Crowqueen wrote: »

Be careful - HMRC apparently don't like people offsetting trade losses against PAYE income too much without genuine evidence you intended to make a profit. You should only do this if you are making a genuine loss - rather than a "paper loss" - as you might get hit with an inspection and then you would have to prove what you were doing was correct.

I would watch what you advise people to do, particularly on a public website.

Advice you never seem to apply to yourself.
What "evidence" would there be that you intend to make a profit?
Though there would be little point in continuing if you made a loss year after year. You only recoup a small percentage of it.