eBay Private Seller - Self Assessment Tax Return??

Jeannette_Baxter

I can understand clamping down on big traders selling thousands of pounds worth of goods, but to target the people, who very often use these sites as a way of boosting their income, is just really mean.  I always thought that when you sell your own stuff, worn clothes, shoes, jewellery, household items etc., that you did not have to declare the income from these, but now it seems that if you sell over £1,000 in a year you have to pay tax regardless, because you then enter a different category of Trader and no longer a  Person.    Considering when you initially purchase an item you pay 20% VAT, (or none in the case of children's clothes and shoes),  then you have already paid tax, so now the taxman wants even more from you - it really is grossly unjust.

So the extra little bit of income that so many people need now, to pay their bills, or save for a holiday, is now in jeopardy.  I am surprised that the platforms themselves have not complained big time, as it will affect their income too. 

Please, please, Martin Lewis, can you get involved in this fiasco and do your usual good work and get HMRC to see sense and work out a better way to recoup tax from big time traders and leave the small scale individuals alone who are only trying to earn a little extra.

JGB1955

You have totally misunderstood the (existing) tax rules.  Only those who are TRADING are involved.  Selling your own pre-owned goods doesn't come into the equation.

se2020

Nothing has changed, 
It's still the way.. if you are only selling your old stuff you are fine and no tax is due.

If you are buying the odd thing or making the odd thing to sell for a few quid pocket money then you will have to start reporting and maybe paying tax once you go over £1000 in total sales income.
But you should have been doing that anyway. 

RFW

Jeannette_Baxter said:=

Please, please, Martin Lewis, can you get involved in this fiasco and do your usual good work and get HMRC to see sense and work out a better way to recoup tax from big time traders and leave the small scale individuals alone who are only trying to earn a little extra.

MSE explains it here.

As said, there are no new tax rules as far as this goes. What there is is a lot of bad media reporting.
As it was HMRC could ask Ebay, Etsy or any similar sites for information about sellers and they would hand it over. HMRC, as far as I'm aware, had bots that looked for patterns, they would then ask the sales platform for info. The new rule is that the sales platform now gives the info to HMRC whether they ask for it or not. They have to comply by the end of Jan 2025 with the information.
It's not certain what, if anything, HMRC will do with the information, my guess is not much as they have too much to do anyway, and not enough staff.
There's quite a good little article here that references Martin Lewis and his Tweet, with a response from HMRC.

"There's been a lot of speculation online about new rules requiring online marketplaces to share certain details with us, and what this means for taxpayers. The reality? There are no changes to tax rules for people who use online marketplaces."

It might be a good idea to change the title of this thread or merge it with the others.

RedImp_2

If you’d read the other 4 threads on the same topic on the front page of this forum would have saved you the trouble of typing all this

RFW

NonStopStress said:

£1000 seems a ridiculous strangely low amount. As someone who used to sell my unwanted items and use the money to buy something new, this £1000 a year is just over £19 a week, once fees and postage and packaging have been taken off it will be about a tenner (£10), for something I likely paid £50 for originally. And now I'll have the hassle of proving I'm not making a profit or a business! Goodbye to Ebay UK, This is the start of the end. 
Why don't HMRC just go control everyone bank accounts, you can soon see whose a business or not there! £1000!! Having a laugh. 

£1000 is the amount of earnings you should be declaring from if you are a business, that has been the case for several years.

The new change is that Ebay and others will have to report anyone selling 30 or more items a year OR have total earnings over the equivalent of €2,000 (currently around £1,700). If you aren't a trader then you won't have to pay anything, as it is now. HMRC won't be interested in you on the figures you've mentioned. Why would they spend £100s chasing you when even the tax on the sales, if you were a business, would be next to nothing?

Take a step back and have a read of what's actually happening and you might be able to stop the stress.

Kim_13

It’s the 30 item limit that would bother me. Unless you were selling an old phone or tablet, someone having a general declutter won’t get anywhere near £1,000 (which I understand, as that is the point from which you have to report earned income, and sadly there are sellers that abuse private accounts when they should be using a business one.) But 30 items wouldn’t be unreasonable for a private seller to sell, indeed some forumites are taking part in challenges to declutter more than that. I realise that no tax will be due, but HMRC will have to agree that first, so it’s just hassle. I’m sure there will be cases of a person being taxed on a sale when they shouldn’t be.

It also stops an experienced seller listing an item on behalf of a friend/relative who doesn’t use eBay themselves - it’s just not worth helping someone when you could end up with a tax hit. They could set up an account in the name of that person, but I’m guessing being zero feedback might put a buyer off if it was a more valuable item.

Spoonie_Turtle

Kim_13 said:

It’s the 30 item limit that would bother me. Unless you were selling an old phone or tablet, someone having a general declutter won’t get anywhere near £1,000 (which I understand, as that is the point from which you have to report earned income, and sadly there are sellers that abuse private accounts when they should be using a business one.) But 30 items wouldn’t be unreasonable for a private seller to sell, indeed some forumites are taking part in challenges to declutter more than that. I realise that no tax will be due, but HMRC will have to agree that first, so it’s just hassle. I’m sure there will be cases of a person being taxed on a sale when they shouldn’t be.

It also stops an experienced seller listing an item on behalf of a friend/relative who doesn’t use eBay themselves - it’s just not worth helping someone when you could end up with a tax hit. They could set up an account in the name of that person, but I’m guessing being zero feedback might put a buyer off if it was a more valuable item.

30 items is just an arbitrary limit at which point eBay pass your details onto HMRC.  That does NOT mean you'll have to register or pay tax or anything.  They may very well not even contact you, particularly if they do manually glance through the account and see it's obviously someone decluttering.

Whatever the limits and thresholds, they are all irrelevant to private sellers who aren't trading (i.e. buying or making things specifically to sell) anyway.

RFW

[Deleted User] said:

No need for sarcasm. 
If you understood me correctly you wouldn't need to keep trying to correct me.

I understand you correctly, I've been trying to tell you that you are incorrect in much of what you have written. If you take the time to look at things that are actually happening and the actual differences to what has been before, which are minimal, then you would see you haven't got much to be concerned about. If you want to believe that if you take over £1000 and HMRC will be coming round to take it as tax then fine but that, or anything close to that won't be happening.

RFW

Kim_13 said:

I realise that no tax will be due, but HMRC will have to agree that first, so it’s just hassle.

No they won't. Nothing is changing. If every UK seller on Ebay taking over £1000 had to negotiate with HMRC our taxes would go through the roof. There's no money in it for them. It's going to be exactly as before.