Do I have to register as a business seller?

buggritt

You can. Providing they are not bought or acquired with the purpose of resale for a profit.
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Crowqueen

As long as OP is not actively trying to buy in or get donations from outside to sell on, then they are not a business.

If they go too far outside the family, however, then they will be trading as they will be acquiring to sell on.

For best results it's probably a reasonable idea to keep it so you are only taking items to sell from around the house or from immediate family members. Starting to ask people to give you stuff to sell, or even if they donate high value items towards your fundraising, will be trading, unfortunately, and you might end up crossing the boundary.

People on the stamp boards on eBay.com used to send me large packets of their excess stamps for free for my own collection (I collected largely cheap, colourful stuff from Eastern Europe, which other people tended not to). Had I been actually selling them, I would have been trading. They've been in my possession for several years now - I'm still not sure what to do with them, although I think I will be OK if I sorted them for sale into bulk lots as surplus to my own collection requirements. As I tend to sell stamps sorted into thematic/country lots, though, because that gets you a bit more money than just sticking up a load of kiloware, I'm not going to do it unless and until I can afford to go pro if eBay ask me to.

I know I wouldn't necessarily even be trading at that point, if I wasn't buying in more lots to sell at the same time, but I do wonder if HMRC might ask me to prove that I was not a business if I was registered as such on eBay and selling in considerable volume.

malo-n-me

I have been an ebay buyer/seller for almost 11 years and have accrued an almost 5,500 - 100% good feedback rating as both buyer and seller. However, I too am being forced to upgrade to a business account or lose the ability to sell items on ebay. Up until two months ago, I have only ever sold my own personal items, mostly clothing or relating to knitting machines which are a passionate hobby of mine.

I rent a cottage, attached to a large house which is owned by my landlord. A few months ago - my landlord’s wife was diagnosed with Alzheimers and forced into a care home. My landlord is 72 years old, blind and severely disabled with osteo-arthritis. He has no siblings, children or immediate family and the loss of his sole carer left him with little choice but to voluntarily enter a residential care home himself. He told me that he has to sell the large house in order to fund his residential care fees and he asked me to sell off the contents of his house, as it needs to go on the market as soon as possible

In his working life, my landlord was a chemist employed by the Shell Oil Company and spent many years abroad in that capacity, during which time he bought many souvenirs of places he and his wife had lived. He had also inherited family heirlooms from his father and grandfather.

I agreed to do this and I have been selling these items over the past couple of months. I started with selling the jewellery and moved on to the silver (along with any smaller items I found to hand) and was just about to start selling their tableware, when ebay stopped my account.

I understand that the payments realised on these sales are huge, compared to personal items of my own that I have sold over the years, but that’s because my landlord's family were – by my standards – wealthy people. Their accumulated (mostly vintage/antique) possessions have commanded greater prices than anything I have ever owned or previously sold on ebay, so I fully understood their interpretation of my account activities.

However - these sales are a temporary measure which will continue only until most of it is sold which I envisage will take another two or three months.

None of the ebay business criteria apply to my activities. I am not running or working for a business and my landlord is not paying me to sell his items. Forcing me to register as a business, is forcing me to make a false claim about my status and I do not believe this to be either fair or moral.

I applied for business exemption and it was granted last Friday (in writing). I was told it would take 24-28 hours for the selling restriction to be lifted from my account. On Monday morning - I received a phone call from ebay telling me they'd changed their mind and they had rescinded the exemption.

I am really gutted (mostly on behalf of my landlord) about this - and of course - it also means I can't now sell any of my own personal items on ebay unless I comply.

The biggest overall feeling however, is one of being 'let down' by ebay, a company for whom I had always had the highest regard.

soolin

Upgrade your current account to a business and sell your landlords things. Then open your own personal account for your own unwanted items. Just be careful though that you are only selling your unwanted items- there is an implication that you sell knitting machine items as a hobby rather than just sell old things you no longer have a need for.

Being a business on ebay is a technicality, you won't need to pay tax or do anything else unless HMRC also believe you are a business. The fact that you will be offering returns will probably mean a higher sell through rate anyway as it reassures buyers- and all you lose is the ability to list on free listing weekends.

You have almost certainly been turned in by other users as antiques/collectable etc is not a category that ebay target for an upgrade. You must admit that to any other seller huge amounts of feedback and sales does look like a business- however you dress it up.

I sell in the antique and collectable categories and half my competitors are private despite having every appearance of a business. I no longer bother reporting any of them though as it is one category that ebay seem to ignore.

RFW

soolin wrote: »

Being a business on ebay is a technicality, you won't need to pay tax or do anything else unless HMRC also believe you are a business. The fact that you will be offering returns will probably mean a higher sell through rate anyway as it reassures buyers- and all you lose is the ability to list on free listing weekends.

Exactly that, I'd also add that there are benefits to being registered as a business seller on Ebay if you are selling regularly.

Anyone unsure of their tax position regarding whether they should be a business or not can contact HMRC, misinformation can result in over paying as well as under paying tax.