Using private ebay as a business.

Haffiana

I cannot see that the Tax Office would give a toss whether an eBay account was registered as a business account or not. It makes no difference to what tax might or might not be due. If you have a business account you do not in some magic way automatically have to pay tax and if you have a private account you may still need to declare income and pay tax. Tax is due because of tax rules, not the name or type of your eBay account. Therefore I'm afraid that the eBay rep either lied or did not understand.

However the difference lies in Consumer law. Customers have better rights when purchasing from a business than from a private seller.

soolin

Haffiana wrote: »

I cannot see that the Tax Office would give a toss whether an eBay account was registered as a business account or not. It makes no difference to what tax might or might not be due. If you have a business account you do not in some magic way automatically have to pay tax and if you have a private account you may still need to declare income and pay tax. Tax is due because of tax rules, not the name or type of your eBay account. Therefore I'm afraid that the eBay rep either lied or did not understand.

However the difference lies in Consumer law. Customers have better rights when purchasing from a business than from a private seller.

Whilst that is all entirely true the actual question concerned whether OP should sell as a business through a 'private' account - which falls foul of consumer law.

Ebay also make decisions as to whether or not they believe a privately registered account is being used to run a business , that is their decision and there at enough threads suggesting that people are upgraded to show this happens.

The OP is already declaring to HMRC and yes HMRC and ebay do exchange information, and that has been widely covered in the press over the years.

ballisticbrian

Whatever the reason, the result was simply ridiculous. We already had two accounts, one business and one private and had no option but to disband the upgraded account and create a new personal account reducing the feedback on it to zero and as my other half was unhappy to delete the other account as it was hers, it leaves another account just hanging around waiting for someone to try to hack into it.