Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sal

Gobsh

Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sales. Just like they make all other deductions?
Or is that too easy?
Does it have to involve 1000000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

Brie

Problem is that ebay doesn't know if you have to pay tax or not.  I would but my OH wouldn't.  

x_raphael_xx

I don't see how keeping a spreadsheet with sales totals would take 1000000 hours

DullGreyGuy

Gobsh said:

Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sales. Just like they make all other deductions?
Or is that too easy?
Does it have to involve 1,000,000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

Its not easy at all... eBay have no idea how much you bought it for, they have no idea if you are keeping stock in your home or are renting space in a warehouse, how much you pay your accountant if you have one, if you use cash or accrual accounting etc etc etc. 

You are effectively suggesting eBay becomes your accountants which means you spending all that time uploading all the data to them in the format they want and inevitably them charging an additional fee for this service. 

Don't get your last comment about 1 million hours/114 man years of time and reference to "tax payers money" re the calculation of your taxes.  Calculation of your taxes is normally fairly instant if you have a decent enough spreadsheet setup or you just put your summary numbers in your tax return and it calculates it in seconds. 

theoretica

Gobsh said:

Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sales. Just like they make all other deductions?
Or is that too easy?
Does it have to involve 1000000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

Paying tax on sales rather than on profit seems like a very poor business model. 

soolin

Gobsh said:

Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sales. Just like they make all other deductions?
Or is that too easy?
Does it have to involve 1000000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

Self employed income cannot even remotely be compared to PAYE and I certainly wouldn't be happy having my margin rate of tax and NI being taken from all my sales! 

Also I don't see how you think this is going to take millions of hours of HMRC man power, they certainly don't have that sort of staff and of course nothing at all has changed tax and reporting wise and for the past 30 years or so it has all been computerised. . The seller prepares accounts, submits them and if you do it online it takes HMRC computers about 6 seconds to provide you with a tax summary showing the tax you need to pay- I doubt whether a real person has even looked at my self assessment form in years. I have absolutely no interaction with a live person at all - I do my accounts, see what tax if any is due, and then make a payment.

RFW

Gobsh said:

Does it have to involve 1000000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

That's not happening. I'm assuming you're referring to Ebay and others sending info to HMRC. HMRC have said they're not doing anything new. They've long since worked out that there's not much money in investigating little sellers. Self assessment is called that for a reason. They rely on most people being honest, which, surprisingly, they are.

Gobsh

Brie said:

Problem is that ebay doesn't know if you have to pay tax or not.  I would but my OH wouldn't.  

That's not a problem, it's an option you could choose, declare and pay tax at full rate, or not

Gobsh

If you don't see the problem I can't help it

x_raphael_xx said:

I don't see how keeping a spreadsheet with sales totals would take 1000000 hours

Gobsh

Absolutely not. Spending 100s hour calculating you owe £28 tax is a poor business model

theoretica said:

Gobsh said:

Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sales. Just like they make all other deductions?
Or is that too easy?
Does it have to involve 1000000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

Paying tax on sales rather than on profit seems like a very poor business model. 

RFW

Gobsh said:

Absolutely not. Spending 100s hour calculating you owe £28 tax is a poor business model

theoretica said:

Gobsh said:

Is it possible to sell on Ebay for profit and just let Ebay deduct tax at standard rate from all sales. Just like they make all other deductions?
Or is that too easy?
Does it have to involve 1000000 hours of tax payers money to calculate tax annually at £23.08

Paying tax on sales rather than on profit seems like a very poor business model. 

Two things there.

Consumers do already, mostly, pay tax on sales. That's VAT. It isn't a small tax either. I do agree it's a poor business model. I'd be quite wealthy if I didn't have to bother with it.

The other point is one I made earlier that no one is spending 100s of hours calculating you owing anything. The info gets bunged in a computer and stays there. Every so often they check one to make sure it's right. Some poor !!!!!! gets a headache for a week or two and then they go on their way. Been there, done that!

I'd actually welcome a simpler tax system that just taxed money in and money out. Surely the government have an idea how much money is spent in the country and how much they need in taxes. Just get all the banks, etc who handle the money to divvy it up. It's never going to happen as they need to make tax as confusing as possible so no one works out how much we're actually paying and how much they're spending.