Paying Tax to HMRC for selling my own personal collection?

Venomspread3r

Good morning I hope everyone is doing great.
I've a question if anybody could help with please?

I've been selling on eBay regularly for about a year now selling off the bulk of my personal items the amount has passed £2k now about 90% of these items are my own personal items with the odd few bits brought from charity shops to resell HOWEVER looking at my accounts the items I actually brought and sold come back at about £300ish profit. 

Do I pay tax on my own personal items ? 
Or because the items I actually brought to resell is well under £1k do I have to pay tax ? 

I'm not looking to dodge anything here just not sure how this works as I'm aware if you're deemed as 'Trading' then yes you should do a self assessment on anything over £2k (I think that's right?) but with the majority being my own private collection I wasn't sure how this worked?!?

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Thankyou.

GadgetGuru

If it's just clearing your old items then you do not pay any tax - it's only on items that your purchased to resell for profit. I've probably made about £6-7k on eBay this year, although I'm just selling off my old stuff, and because its mainly IT related items it's generally more expensive - but it was initially purchased for my own use and then resold. Non of it was purchased with the intention of making profit.

Venomspread3r

Thanks for the reply @GadgetGuru so how would you prove this ? Would you just ignore anything from HMRC not that I've had anything from them I work full time and moved in with my partner & started selling my 'Man Toys' as my partner would call them don't get me wrong I have flipped the odd thing but I rarely have the time to get to charity shops etc. and as mentioned it barely touches £300.

soolin

Venomspread3r said:

Thanks for the reply @GadgetGuru so how would you prove this ? Would you just ignore anything from HMRC not that I've had anything from them I work full time and moved in with my partner & started selling my 'Man Toys' as my partner would call them don't get me wrong I have flipped the odd thing but I rarely have the time to get to charity shops etc. and as mentioned it barely touches £300.

There is no set way to prove things and in all likelihood you are never going to be caught if you flip items. There is also a £1000 trading allowance so you don't even need to report until your total income from commercial selling (ie flipping or making things to sell) exceeds the £1000 in a tax year. That £1000 though includes everything before expenses, so even postage elements so less than £20 a week.

There are several long threads already running here on MSE I'll add links later for you.

soolin

This one is a Vinted question but the info remains the same,
Vinted & Hmrc — MoneySavingExpert Forum

I sell only my own assets at a loss, but more than 30 per year. Do I need to tell HMRC? - Page 2 — MoneySavingExpert Forum

eBayer worrying about new HMRC Reporting Requirements — MoneySavingExpert Forum

I'm sure there was more recent threads but I can't find them.

RFW

Venomspread3r said:

Good morning I hope everyone is doing great.
I've a question if anybody could help with please?

I've been selling on eBay regularly for about a year now selling off the bulk of my personal items the amount has passed £2k now about 90% of these items are my own personal items with the odd few bits brought from charity shops to resell HOWEVER looking at my accounts the items I actually brought and sold come back at about £300ish profit. 

Do I pay tax on my own personal items ? 
Or because the items I actually brought to resell is well under £1k do I have to pay tax ? 

I'm not looking to dodge anything here just not sure how this works as I'm aware if you're deemed as 'Trading' then yes you should do a self assessment on anything over £2k (I think that's right?) but with the majority being my own private collection I wasn't sure how this worked?!?

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Thankyou.

You've got several things going on there. First, declaration as a business has nothing to do with profit.

As said above there is a £1000 turnover threshold for declaring as a business. Whether you'd need to pay tax on that is irrelevant for declaring purposes. The chances are you wouldn't have to pay any tax anyway as there's not much there. A ten minute chat with an accountant would probably sort that out for you.
Personal items are not taxable. The £2000 figure is actually 2000Euros, so about £1700, or 30 sold items. That's a figure (in 12 months) above which Ebay and other marketplaces have to report turnover to HMRC. That has nothing to do with being a business or profit, it is simply turnover.

If you're unsure of anything get advice. HMRC are fairly helpful on the phone, although they usually take ages to answer. Then there are accountants and CAB.

GadgetGuru

In all honesty, HMRC are going to hit the bigger 'private sellers'. 
If someone is selling over 500-1000 items in a short space of time then it's going to look like a trader and need further investigation. 
Whereas someone who has sold less then 100 in a year, even though the total may be £5-8k for instance, is less likely to be a trader/business.......

But then again, you never know with HMRC!

soolin

GadgetGuru said:

In all honesty, HMRC are going to hit the bigger 'private sellers'. 
If someone is selling over 500-1000 items in a short space of time then it's going to look like a trader and need further investigation. 
Whereas someone who has sold less then 100 in a year, even though the total may be £5-8k for instance, is less likely to be a trader/business.......

But then again, you never know with HMRC!

I have said before that I used to do voluntary work assisting people with their HMRC and DWP enquiries. Most of the people 'caught' back then, and this was years ago, were reported by friends or family and usually DWP got to them before HMRC did.

It was common for someone to be bulk buying clothes from charity shops or car boots, then reselling them for a profit and perhaps boasting a little too much about that extra week by the coast, or being able to afford meals out- and sometimes even close relatives getting absolutely fed up with it and reporting anonymously.

Now that we are all going to be providing our NI numbers to all online sites - HMRC can probably use Bots to see who needs an extra look or not. Although I suspect a tiny drop of those trading will actually be questioned - but I do imagine that the gentle enquiry letters will be going out to more people than HMRC could possibly cope with anyway.

Venomspread3r

RFW said:

Venomspread3r said:

Good morning I hope everyone is doing great.
I've a question if anybody could help with please?

I've been selling on eBay regularly for about a year now selling off the bulk of my personal items the amount has passed £2k now about 90% of these items are my own personal items with the odd few bits brought from charity shops to resell HOWEVER looking at my accounts the items I actually brought and sold come back at about £300ish profit. 

Do I pay tax on my own personal items ? 
Or because the items I actually brought to resell is well under £1k do I have to pay tax ? 

I'm not looking to dodge anything here just not sure how this works as I'm aware if you're deemed as 'Trading' then yes you should do a self assessment on anything over £2k (I think that's right?) but with the majority being my own private collection I wasn't sure how this worked?!?

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Thankyou.

You've got several things going on there. First, declaration as a business has nothing to do with profit.

As said above there is a £1000 turnover threshold for declaring as a business. Whether you'd need to pay tax on that is irrelevant for declaring purposes. The chances are you wouldn't have to pay any tax anyway as there's not much there. A ten minute chat with an accountant would probably sort that out for you.
Personal items are not taxable. The £2000 figure is actually 2000Euros, so about £1700, or 30 sold items. That's a figure (in 12 months) above which Ebay and other marketplaces have to report turnover to HMRC. That has nothing to do with being a business or profit, it is simply turnover.

If you're unsure of anything get advice. HMRC are fairly helpful on the phone, although they usually take ages to answer. Then there are accountants and CAB.

Yes the majority of my sales are my personal items or gifts I've received over the years.
It does seem from reading these very helpful responses that I don't need to report anything I just saw it flagged up that sellers etc had until 5th October (I could be wrong) to get a self assessment sent otherwise a fine of £100 would be issued hence why I looked into this thinking "does this affect me?"

You are right a ten minute chat with an accountant might help (quite how much that 10 minute chat will cost is a different matter all together haha) 

RFW

Venomspread3r said:

You are right a ten minute chat with an accountant might help (quite how much that 10 minute chat will cost is a different matter all together haha) 

If you get the right one it could end up saving you quite a bit. I see some people who are terrified of declaring for tax purposes and often it turns out that if they'd done it right they'd have nothing to pay and could possibly have been overpaying other taxes before that.

Venomspread3r

Yes I hear what you're saying best to be safe than sorry I'll look into speaking to an accountant