hi newbie to paying tax would love advice

dprovan

Hi

I am unsure what I need and should do so would appreciate any advice. I will try to keep it short.

I started selling on ebay as a bit of a hobby and it soon grew much bigger than I expected. I have a full-time job (I earn around 36k) and do this in addition in my evenings etc. I buy and sell on ebay. I have a large turnover which I am trying to keep an eye on so I don’t go over the VAT quota . (is this around 60k). I probably average approx 4-5 k in sales per month. After all fees associated with sales ie paypal/ebay/postage I probably make on average 300-600 per month profit. I have very little overheads; I bought myself a laptop which I do only use for the business other than that little else. I use internet but use for other things.

I have been keeping all receipts in the form of email receipts that I receive. These have name of supplier reference number date cost etc. I have printed these off and kept them in folders per month. I also keep an excel document listing all sales/purchases/costs for each month. I only sell via paypal so it is easy to demonstrate money coming in.

I registered with the tax office in April and have been paying NI contributions but have not visited an accountant, I wasn’t sure if I needed to (are the records I keep sufficient?) and I wasn’t sure what I needed them to do for me? How much it might cost?

I also carry a high level of stock just now I probably have about 9k worth of stock to sell, some I will sell before April some will carry over, so I am wondering how I represent this and also how I predict its value, by the nature of what I do sometimes I make profits some times I make losses so do I estimate its value or calculate the cost of purchasing this.

Finally I wonder how I represent purchases and sales. Say I buy 6 units costing £50 each do I need to show where I sold those specific 6 units and how much for. Sometimes my items don’t sell at all and are out of date for example. Or is it suffice to show units bought and units sold and stock left or do you need to illustrate numbers bought matched against numbers sold…. I hope that makes sense.

Thank you so much for any advice. I am the sort that I learn quick when I know what Im doing but I have never had to deal with tax matters before as an employee.

mrs_deadline

VAT kicks in when turnover for a 12-month period reaches 64k or more.

Given what you say about this not being your main income, it sounds quite a high volume - you could easily afford to get an accountant to draw up your accounts and complete the tax form.

They will save you a lot of time and hassle by knowing the right way to account for things like stock in hand, and by keeping such very good records as you do, you'll be keeping their fees to a minimum too.