Ebay to report sales to HMRC

[slackboy]

Heres the HMRC guidance:

Selling online and paying taxes - information sheet

www.gov.uk

heres an explanation of the trading allowance:

Trading Allowance - TaxAid

This allowance has been introduced from the 6 April 2017 (tax year 2017/18) The Allowance is £1,000 of GROSS income. That is income before any expenses. The exemption is automatic and if your self employed income is £1,000 or less you do not need to tell HMRC or file a tax return. It applies to […]

taxaid.org.uk

The £1000 figure is the income (not profit) threshold before you have to register as self employed - its basically there as d8mok says to allow hobby businesses ( babysitting etc) to trade without having to concern themselves with self assessment, NIC or tax

theres also an online questionnaire

Check if you need to tell HMRC about additional income

Check whether you need to report and pay any tax on income you make apart from your main job or earnings.

www.gov.uk

In order to pay tax on the goods or services you sell online, you either have to be trading or making a capital gain.

so, you either have to be buying stuff in order to sell at a profit (and turnover more than £1k), or have sold high value items at a profit in which case capital gains tax would apply.


As with all these things, you would need to be able to evidence that the stuff you sold were personal belongings rather than bought to sell in the event of of HMRC asking.

 

[Betsy]

Just wait till next year when RB becomes duty-bound to fwd the classified section to HMRC

 

[greencat]

The guidance seems clear to me. A lot of it is about intent, which will be subject to margin of plausible deniability. This is about cracking down on the obvious traders who have previously gone under the wire. I can't see it affecting our community much, outside of those who are regularly flipping or splitting bikes to sell on for a profit. Even then, I imagine they will be after those making thousands rather than hundreds.

If you think your selling activity might be subject to future HMRC interest, it would be worth start keeping records inc of your costs eg postage, selling fees etc.

 

[greencat]

A useful guide:

Side hustle tax: mythbusting the new rules - Be Clever With Your Cash

New HMRC reporting rules have come into play for digital platforms which could impact you if you've got a side hustle. Here's the lowdown.

becleverwithyourcash.com

 

[MSYT]

Just had this email come through. Makes me wonder if eBay are seeing a big down turn in private sellers.

Free selling. No fees. Damn.

 

[greencat]

Just had this email come through. Makes me wonder if eBay are seeing a big down turn in private sellers.

Free selling. No fees. Damn.

It's all very well eBay being coy about this but changes to their practices, fees etc have only served to discourage sellers clearing out their attic/disposing of a few unwanted items in favour of semi-professional/professional sellers, some being very large companies indeed.

My guess is a lot of professional/semi-professional sellers have hoped HMRC wouldn't bother with them. Now it's coming back to bite eBay in a big way. The platform also looks distinctly uncared for. The search features remain extremely poor, and I think they've been coasting for some years on developing and improving the platform.

 

[fettler]

Just had this email come through. Makes me wonder if eBay are seeing a big down turn in private sellers.

Free selling. No fees. Damn.

Check the small print, does this include the 'final value fee' or just the listing fees?

They must like you as I haven't had that message!

 

[bikeworkshop]

If you're making some profit, don't be afraid of paying the tax.
The schools and hospitals need it

Jeff Bezos isn't paying much.

Loads of (new) stuff is bought off Internet businesses who pay almost nothing (like all those duplicate Chinese ebay companies with 97.2% feedback) where it used to be bought from shops paying vat etc - with higher prices obvs.

We've all had stuff delivered from China (even unknowingly) with no tax applied, maybe even the "gift" box checked by the seller?

If we pay enough tax, the police might find time to treat bike theft as a crime again!

 

[Betsy]

You idealistic loon!..

The government are itching to give us a tax cut even though it's unaffordable because this will make them more electable.. low income households trying to save £££s on bike parts would end up paying more for them, this would only serve to offset the cut to national insurance contribution which disproportionately benefits high earners so we're back to square one.. ain't no bike theft getting investigated anytime soon.

 

[ibbz]

More disgusting establishment theft of individual rights and their money. What next? Will they start on jumble bring and buy sales and boot markets ?