Sold on ebay and vinted, trying to complete a SA on items i have very little proof of purchases

pete1975

Happy new year everyone, I’m supposed to be doing dry January but I already feel like I need a drink. 

 I’m currently reading though the various threads on here about the SA rule with eBay and selling,  I’ve only sold items which i was going to use, some had light use where Iuse to travel a lot with work so it was different backpacks, packing qubes, travel bags/laptop bags,  also an office chair, a few old uni books from my daughter, e-reader, govee lights, aftershave, computer keyboards, keyring, 4 x used mobile phones, analogue telephones so a mixture of stuff but the bags make up all of it, sold my whole collection except for 4 which i've kept as I travel maybe 4 times a year now.   I have receipts for some of them; some were bought when I travelled to the USA on a business trip a few years back and I don’t even have the credit card I bought them on, and also some other countries. I sold the lot by around October/November this year and that’s it I haven’t sold anything else since and won’t do.   

I have downloaded the excels from eBay and I was surprised how much I actually have earn't, If I was asked I would have said max 4-5k.  The bags i've sold for less than retail,  normally they were selling for around 50% of retail price, even though they were sold as new or nearly new

 

Vinted 2024 – 20 items total sales £899

Vinted 2025 -  45 items total sales £2663.81

 

Ebay 2024 – £10241.83 gross – net £9346.83

Ebay 2025 –  £7771.71 gross sales -  net £7103.41

 

I need to update my SA for these after a conversation at work , and googling and looking at the questions and the answers on here,   I guess my problem now is I’ve sold items that are same, obviously I have a reason for it, but I'm not sure that’s going to wash with HMRC,  especially the packing cubes, I have no idea why I actually had as much as I did,  they were obviously cheaper or a good price and we are a family of 6 so always came in handy,  and I don’t have the receipts anywhere, I’m a nightmare and always have been if I bought something today I wouldn’t keep the receipt on me. 

I’m expecting they will now fine me for this as I can’t actually prove how much I paid for them, and such thing as our mobile phones I can’t even remember where we bought them and don’t have receipts. 

 

I have logged into my HRMC account,  I'm PAYE now, but a few years ago I had to complete a SA because we were claiming child benefit, and I got medical cover at work which i had to wait til my p11d came though to see how much it was to enter the amount on the SA. 

 

There is a section where you can check if you need to complete a SA ,   is it this box that I need to complete?

 

   
what has confused me is the following when you check on HRMC is when you complete the questions on do i need to complete a SA, its still saying on there I dont have 

soolin

I think you are overthinking this and a re read of the various threads might be in order.

you only need to declare items you bought to resell, or items you made to sell. You do not declare personal items, a lot of this was discussed in your other thread where I know Vinted decided you were a pro seller. However neither Vinted nor eBay can over ride HMRC rules.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6629939/vinted-a-few-months-ago-i-was-advise-i-had-to-become-a-pro-seller-now-i-have-to-provide-business#latest

if you are confident that the HMRC badges of trade cannot be applied to you then don’t submit a SA , but I agree this is likely to be challenged by HMRC , assuming they ever get round to you as they can’t cope with the amount of work they already have. If however there is any element of overbuying because you were gambling on a resale  value then declare. According to your other thread you have a UTR number already. 

I suspect with the amount of duplicates it does rather wander into looking like  a business and you may end up needing to show that you had some sort of addiction, perhaps photographs of an overstuffed house, that kind of thing. 

pete1975

soolin said:

I think you are overthinking this and a re read of the various threads might be in order.

you only need to declare items you bought to resell, or items you made to sell. You do not declare personal items, a lot of this was discussed in your other thread where I know Vinted decided you were a pro seller. However neither Vinted nor eBay can over ride HMRC rules.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6629939/vinted-a-few-months-ago-i-was-advise-i-had-to-become-a-pro-seller-now-i-have-to-provide-business#latest

if you are confident that the HMRC badges of trade cannot be applied to you then don’t submit a SA , but I agree this is likely to be challenged by HMRC , assuming they ever get round to you as they can’t cope with the amount of work they already have. If however there is any element of overbuying because you were gambling on a resale  value then declare. According to your other thread you have a UTR number already. 

I suspect with the amount of duplicates it does rather wander into looking like  a business and you may end up needing to show that you had some sort of addiction, perhaps photographs of an overstuffed house, that kind of thing. 

Thankyou, I still havent managed to fix the issue with vinted either,  photos would be quite easy i seem to be a collector at best, hoarder is what my wife says,  but i have loads of aftershaves not opened,  duplicates,  and books and clothes, that i neither read or wear.   

mChavez

You are overthinking this indeed.

You need to engage in trading (see badges of trade) and turn over > £1k to be subject to tax.

While intention (or lack of it) to re-sell at a profit is hard to prove, as long as you did not advertise yourself as a business, did not sell multiple quantities of the same items for a total > £1k and did not re-sell a lot of recently purchased items, you should be in the clear.

In terms of duplicates: how many have you had and what did you get for them? If your packing cubes (whatever that is) turned over less than £1k in total, I'd argue that it doesn't matter that they were repeats, as if worst comes to worst and the taxman puts a gun to your head, you just claim small trading exemption on them. The fact that you sold half of your family's personal possessions in the same year is irrelevant. 

If you happened to sell 200 cubes for £6k with a £2k profit, then yeah, that looks like trading, even if it genuinely wasn't. Also, if you happened to sell brand new cubes while advertising yourself as "Pete's Cube emporium" that's likely to be seen as trading. If your annual salary is £25k and you're selling £10k a year, that's likely to be seen as trading. If your salary is £125k and you're selling £10k worth of old stuff a year, that's pocket money. Etc etc.

What HMRC are doing with this ebay nonsense is trying to scare folks into paying tax that's not due - they have a budget hole to plug, right.

As long as you were not trading, for Income tax purposes it doesn't really matter how much cash you've managed to recover from selling your old stuff. CGT might some in for high value items sold at a gain, but I don't think that's the case here. 

Unfortunately, they might come knocking on your door and waste a lot of your time and the taxpayers' money trying to bully you into paying up, like a bunch of thugs trying to shake you for some protection money. 

So if you're not trading, no declaration is required on your SA, but you need to save some back up to cover your behind if they come after you. 

soolin

mChavez said:

You are overthinking this indeed.

You need to engage in trading (see badges of trade) and turn over > £1k to be subject to tax.

While intention (or lack of it) to re-sell at a profit is hard to prove, as long as you did not advertise yourself as a business, did not sell multiple quantities of the same items for a total > £1k and did not re-sell a lot of recently purchased items, you should be in the clear.

In terms of duplicates: how many have you had and what did you get for them? If your packing cubes (whatever that is) turned over less than £1k in total, I'd argue that it doesn't matter that they were repeats, as if worst comes to worst and the taxman puts a gun to your head, you just claim small trading exemption on them. The fact that you sold half of your family's personal possessions in the same year is irrelevant. 

If you happened to sell 200 cubes for £6k with a £2k profit, then yeah, that looks like trading, even if it genuinely wasn't. Also, if you happened to sell brand new cubes while advertising yourself as "Pete's Cube emporium" that's likely to be seen as trading. If your annual salary is £25k and you're selling £10k a year, that's likely to be seen as trading. If your salary is £125k and you're selling £10k worth of old stuff a year, that's pocket money. Etc etc.

What HMRC are doing with this ebay nonsense is trying to scare folks into paying tax that's not due - they have a budget hole to plug, right.

As long as you were not trading, for Income tax purposes it doesn't really matter how much cash you've managed to recover from selling your old stuff. CGT might some in for high value items sold at a gain, but I don't think that's the case here. 

Unfortunately, they might come knocking on your door and waste a lot of your time and the taxpayers' money trying to bully you into paying up, like a bunch of thugs trying to shake you for some protection money. 

So if you're not trading, no declaration is required on your SA, but you need to save some back up to cover your behind if they come after you. 

The badges of trade do not require a seller to advertise as a business at all, in fact most sole traders have no business presence, I for instance trade under my own name, I'm just 'Soolin' trading and trade with just my name, I am however registered with HMRC as my turnover exceeds £1000 , and I have a UTR number. 

The £1000 trading allowance also relates to turnover and is on the total, not on individual types/multi similar items and OP is way above that already. Both ebay and Vinted will be returning the figures to HMRC and I think with the level of turnover, multiples of the same item and the number of new items they may well be asked to clarify at some point, perhaps not this year or next- but I suspect they will be on the radar. Other earned income has nothing at all to do with whether a person is trading or not.

The statement amount HMRC going after people to fill a gap is just conspiracy nonsense, there has been and continues to be a requirement for businesses to pay appropriate tax on their profits- there has been no tax legislation changes. previously unregistered businesses were 'caught' by being turned in by friends or family, or coming across the radar of HMRC with adverts or just on turnover. Now they don't have to wait for online sellers to be reported, if an unregistered business has been trading under the radar it will now be easier to see that - and whilst I don't believe that HMRC will have time to go after everyone, I think there will be some headline cases to worry people into correct reporting. 

mChavez

soolin said:

The £1000 trading allowance also relates to turnover and is on the total, not on individual types/multi similar items and OP is way above that already.

Only on the assumption that all of his ebay sales are trading, which is clearly not the case here.

If he sold £500 worth of cubes at £300 profit, and his £11k rolex through the same ebay account, I'd argue that his trading turnover is £500, not £11,500. Just because he sold some old personal stuff does not make him a business and small trading exemption applies.

And afaik, sole traders are still not required to separate their business bank accounts from personal ones, so why do you think the same principle does not apply to ebay?

soolin said:

The badges of trade do not require a seller to advertise as a business at all, 

They don't. But if you advertise yourself as a business you have little to no chance of arguing that you weren't trading.

soolin

mChavez said:

soolin said:

The £1000 trading allowance also relates to turnover and is on the total, not on individual types/multi similar items and OP is way above that already.

Only on the assumption that all of his ebay sales are trading, which is clearly not the case here.

If he sold £500 worth of cubes at £300 profit, and his £11k rolex through the same ebay account, I'd argue that his trading turnover is £500, not £11,500. Just because he sold some old personal stuff does not make him a business and small trading exemption applies.

And afaik, sole traders are still not required to separate their business bank accounts from personal ones, so why do you think the same principle does not apply to ebay?

I don't think there is any disagreement between us about the need to keep business and private sales apart when discussing tax obligations,  however OP sold several different types of items in multiples and in new condition  which totalled over £1000 and which may trigger a closer look. Just stating that you aren't trading is not enough to get HMRC to drop it if they believe that a seller satisfies the badges of trade, which is why I caution the OP to tread carefully with this.

Yes it's perfectly possible to sell private items on ebay through a business account, but I think it can muddy the waters unless there is good book keeping in place,, but it is technically not legal to see business items on a private account as a private account does not satisfy the requirements of a geographic address being clearly supplied by any business. However the fact that OP sells as a private seller on ebay makes no real difference to whether HMRC will check for the badges of trade. The OP is also selling as a 'pro' seller on Vinted, and whilst Vinted can't over ride HMRC (as I stated in my earlier reply) I don't think this is going to help the situation at all. 

This question comes up a lot and most of the time it is easy to reassure OPs, this time I think the burden of proof may need a bit of effort on OPs part- however I still don't think HMRC are going to even glance at the majority of online sites  returns as they don't have the staff. 

mChavez

Ok, I think we might be in agreement indeed.

OP claims he's not trading - I'll take his gentleman's word for it. 

My first point of call would be to tick off items that appear like trading. I'd limit this to "brand new" repeats, "brand new" or "unused" items of the same type and any other recently purchased used items re-sold at a profit. So, selling 20 "brand new" and "mint condition" travel bags will be in scope. Kids' old bicycles won't be.

If t/o is sub £1k I would stop here.

If these items are above £1k t/o, but were not sold at a combined profit, I'd stop here. There's no tax liability due here, so just how much time would HMRC want to waste on it?

If they were sold at a combined profit, HMRC can argue there's tax due here, but only on profits on this list of items - not on other personal items that happened to be sold through the same account.

I agree that HMRC investigating private online traders would be a gross waste of their staff's time - hopefully they are smarter than that.

soolin

If these items are above £1k t/o, but were not sold at a combined profit, I'd stop here. There's no tax liability due here, so just how much time would HMRC want to waste on it 

I’d be careful with this as HMRC don’t have to waste time. The Bots will identify an issue and send a standard ‘do you want to reconsider your tax return submission.’ . It would then be the sellers time that is wasted trying to prove they do not fit the badges of trade criteria, meanwhile HMRC will raise an estimated tax bill and it would be up to seller to show why this was not due. I’m out of date now and when I was doing voluntary advice it was all done on paper and the tax bill raised if the seller didn’t respond satisfactorily was usually the whole lot taxed at sellers marginal rate pending accurate accounts, or an explanation from seller. HMRC will just see the turnover, they won’t have access to the expenses that could easily reduce the tax bill considerably, even to a loss. 

pete1975

thanks mChavez said:

You are overthinking this indeed.

You need to engage in trading (see badges of trade) and turn over > £1k to be subject to tax.

While intention (or lack of it) to re-sell at a profit is hard to prove, as long as you did not advertise yourself as a business, did not sell multiple quantities of the same items for a total > £1k and did not re-sell a lot of recently purchased items, you should be in the clear.

In terms of duplicates: how many have you had and what did you get for them? If your packing cubes (whatever that is) turned over less than £1k in total, I'd argue that it doesn't matter that they were repeats, as if worst comes to worst and the taxman puts a gun to your head, you just claim small trading exemption on them. The fact that you sold half of your family's personal possessions in the same year is irrelevant. 

If you happened to sell 200 cubes for £6k with a £2k profit, then yeah, that looks like trading, even if it genuinely wasn't. Also, if you happened to sell brand new cubes while advertising yourself as "Pete's Cube emporium" that's likely to be seen as trading. If your annual salary is £25k and you're selling £10k a year, that's likely to be seen as trading. If your salary is £125k and you're selling £10k worth of old stuff a year, that's pocket money. Etc etc.

What HMRC are doing with this ebay nonsense is trying to scare folks into paying tax that's not due - they have a budget hole to plug, right.

As long as you were not trading, for Income tax purposes it doesn't really matter how much cash you've managed to recover from selling your old stuff. CGT might some in for high value items sold at a gain, but I don't think that's the case here. 

Unfortunately, they might come knocking on your door and waste a lot of your time and the taxpayers' money trying to bully you into paying up, like a bunch of thugs trying to shake you for some protection money. 

So if you're not trading, no declaration is required on your SA, but you need to save some back up to cover your behind if they come after you. 

Hi thanks for taking the time to reply, a packing cube is a pouch which holds clothes that packs into a suitcase and it can be compressed to make you fit more clothes into the suitcase,  I bought many due to family holidays, daughter at uni travelling back and forth and of course me for business travel they are useful and come in handy to separate everything out in the case.   I've sold 15 of those, ive still got around 10 at home i listed all the colours and whatever didnt sell i kept     I paid around £39 per set and sold them from anywhere of £20 to £25 .  the largest value item is a sofa that was sold for £1300 and after that it was our mobile phones for around £400 each. Some of the backpacks are £300 retail and as i hadnt used them or had but literally once then they sold for around £150-190 on average.
 I have reached out to vinted, as it was their customer services saying they see me as a trader as sold similar items and that to continue to use the platform I had to register as a seller, my fault i didn't really look into what that mean't, made a silly assumption it was like the ebay gold seller, and the only difference at the time was that someone buying something had 14 days to return it, I had 5 stars no bad reviews for the items sold.  But definately not set up as business or just sell one thing,  and i havent sold anything in december will now as i've reduced them all down to healthy number,   well until the next new editions of the bags have been released then i might find myself purchasing one or two
Even the business name i had to enter i just put my name, there was no checks when i set it up or didnt ask me to provide business registration or anything like that. 

Spoonie_Turtle

I bought many due to family holidays, daughter at uni travelling back and forth and of course me for business travel

This should be easy to provide evidence for, e-mails of booking confirmations for holidays and business travel, and text exchanges about when your daughter was travelling.  Much easier to evidence than if for example you were someone who collected them solely as a collection, then later decided to sell some off.  (I gather there's some element of that, but the fact they were in fact used for travel and that's a reason for buying a lot, is helpful.)

The backpacks might be a bit tricky unless they appear in photos being used, but they are consistent with what you say about the overall situation, similar to the packing cubes.  

You were definitely overthinking it before because there are things that very clearly are old unwanted personal possessions, just focus on gathering evidence for the items that might look more like potential trading just in case they do query you.

I assume the excels from eBay include the listing titles?  Do they also include any description?  My only worry would be that by the time HMRC got round to investigating (if they are going to), the listings with the descriptions would have gone, which potentially form part of your proof that some of the items were used and any explanation you might have included for why you were selling them.  So it might be an idea if you can maybe take screenshots or something, just as a backup to cover yourself in case they do investigate.