Hmrc letter

Barnes107

It's a possibility in the future, but until this is rectified, I can't even think of ebaying anymore. And I'm tempted to donate all my remaining items to charity or give somebody else the headache of selling them!! 

I've printed off all of my data, and am going to mark each item as taxable or non taxable. I'll then pay an accountant to help me go through it all and fill in my disclosures. I guess they will look at it more favourably too if they see it's been submitted by a recognised accountant. 

Hopefully we arrive at a figure that the HMRC are happy with, they let me pay, and have this matter sorted smoothly. I literally can't deal with any more stress. 

At this point, I don't care what it costs, I don't even care about making savings and deductable expenses - I just want it over and to be able to sleep at night without worry. 

strawb_shortcake

I'm glad I read this thread, I hadn't quite realised that the £1k was only applicable to traders. 
Pre-empting a house move later this year we are clearing out the attic, 3 months in and we've made nearly £900. 
It's been quite a mixed assortment, some household bits, but also a lot of now collectables, but were our old toys. We inherited thousands of comics and have been selling them on and off over the years, so hoping that doesn't look as if we are traders?
We still have lots more that we'll be keeping, just getting rid of the unwanted ones

soolin

strawb_shortcake said:

I'm glad I read this thread, I hadn't quite realised that the £1k was only applicable to traders. 
Pre-empting a house move later this year we are clearing out the attic, 3 months in and we've made nearly £900. 
It's been quite a mixed assortment, some household bits, but also a lot of now collectables, but were our old toys. We inherited thousands of comics and have been selling them on and off over the years, so hoping that doesn't look as if we are traders?
We still have lots more that we'll be keeping, just getting rid of the unwanted ones

Only traders need the allowance as private sales are not taxable, so don't require it.

Again I can only say I am well out of date, but I always used to advise people to have photos of clutter. Have a collection of fancy teapots for example?- take photos of them on the shelf, have a large stamp collection, photograph the pile of stamp albums in a cupboard. A clothes hoarder, take photos of your bulging wardrobe.

It is simplistic, and of course still no guarantee that HMRC might not ask questions, but a random assortment of things likely to have been left lying around for years is not likely to attract much in the way of a concern for HMRC.

RFW

Barnes107 said:

I've printed off all of my data, and am going to mark each item as taxable or non taxable. I'll then pay an accountant to help me go through it all and fill in my disclosures. I guess they will look at it more favourably too if they see it's been submitted by a recognised accountant. 

So a few years ago I had a VAT compliance check. I'm registered for VAT and everything was in order but it was quite stressful for a while. They contacted me direct and asked for various information, my accountant was not pleased that they were asking me rather than them. My point here is that if you are getting an accountant, which I highly recommend, then let the accountant deal with contacting them. You'll get a much better result with a half decent accountant. Be sure to ask the accountant questions before you use them, they have different areas of expertise.

Pollycat

soolin said:

strawb_shortcake said:

I'm glad I read this thread, I hadn't quite realised that the £1k was only applicable to traders. 
Pre-empting a house move later this year we are clearing out the attic, 3 months in and we've made nearly £900. 
It's been quite a mixed assortment, some household bits, but also a lot of now collectables, but were our old toys. We inherited thousands of comics and have been selling them on and off over the years, so hoping that doesn't look as if we are traders?
We still have lots more that we'll be keeping, just getting rid of the unwanted ones

Again I can only say I am well out of date, but I always used to advise people to have photos of clutter. Have a collection of fancy teapots for example?- take photos of them on the shelf, have a large stamp collection, photograph the pile of stamp albums in a cupboard. A clothes hoarder, take photos of your bulging wardrobe.

It is simplistic, and of course still no guarantee that HMRC might not ask questions, but a random assortment of things likely to have been left lying around for years is not likely to attract much in the way of a concern for HMRC.

I'm half-expecting a letter.
Very much a private seller but have been selling quite a bit of stuff.
Although I have over 15 pairs of footwear listed, they are all different styles and the same size (between 2 and 3.5).
It might sound a lot but I have 10 times that number that I'm keeping (for the moment), all photographed in situ.
I have photos of my silver necklaces and an Excel spreadsheet of when I bought them.
Ditto my Citizen Eco-drive watches.
My wardrobes are bulging with clothes - I have photos of those too.

If HMRC deem me a trader, I'd start donating my stuff directly to a charity shop (I used to do this before eBay) and just sell the more expensive items.

Barnes107

I can't find too much about this online. There aren't that many threads on ebayers who've actually received a HMRC letter. I can see a dozen threads at most. 

If anybody knows of a thread where a small time re-seller/trader has made, or is in the process of making a disclosure , can somebody please point me to it as I feel quite alone in this, and it would be helpful to speak to somebody in a similar position. 

Thanks 

Spoonie_Turtle

I hesitate to recommend it because the site can have people giving some awful advice, but … reddit is often quite helpful for finding others with the same problem or experience in just about any area of life.  Just don't believe everything you read in the comments, double-check any advice given for its legality!

CGR9

in the case of selling part of a large 30 year collection of items as ebay will have provided details of what was sold and for what price does one just have to confirm the purchase price of each item?

soolin

CGR9 said:

in the case of selling part of a large 30 year collection of items as ebay will have provided details of what was sold and for what price does one just have to confirm the purchase price of each item?

Not if they were private items being sold on. there would be no tax liability so no need to prove anything. The issue was, and still is around people who re sell professionally, and manage to find untold amounts of treasure in their loft, month after month, year after year. 

Hoenir

Barnes107 said:

I can't find too much about this online. There aren't that many threads on ebayers who've actually received a HMRC letter. I can see a dozen threads at most. 

The HMRC have always sent letters to people when they've detected an undeclared source of taxable income.  The fact that it's Ebay is secondary. Easy for the HMRC to target though as the data in this instance is in black and white. Rather than being cash in hand trading and more difficult to assess.