Deciding whether to become a business seller or stop selling altogether ...

[jc-2002]

I'm looking for a bit of insight into what would be involved in changing my seller account from private to business, especially with ref to self assessment paperwork etc.

I've looked though the financial statements which ebay produce monthly for me and I'm trying to scope out what would be involved paperwork-wise in becoming a sole trader (I believe that's the correct phrase!). I think I would need to fill in an HMRC SA100 and an SA103 short form as I would be below the VAT threshold.

My monthly financial statements have an entry called "payouts". This looks to be the sum total of payments made by ebay to me for the month. The payouts appear to have already taken care of any seller fees and refunds etc.

Is it as simple as adding up all these payouts on the 12 statements covering the tax year and that would be what I would put in the "turnover" section of the SA103?

That seems way to simple, but maybe I'm overthinking it.

Any advice apprecited.

Mark.

[jc-2002]

That's just how I was handling 2 orders on click & drop in the past.

The 7.3K items sold is somewhat misleading as I believe that is from when I first joined ebay - back in 2003! 

I think it's currently averaging around 10 items a day - but frequently there are multiple items from the same buyer so it's more likely to be between 5 and 10 letters (or large letters) per day. The RM business account seems to require an average of 20 parcels a week which I would unlikely achieve in a year! But thanks for the heads up.  

[susapric-68]

You do qualify with 5-10 LL a day, ignore the parcel part. as long as it's 1k + anything a year then you can get one. Not sure what you pay per LL but i pay £1.20 each and get most of them scanned on delivery

[papso22]

Many correctly registered business sellers would be delighted to sell 10 items a day. 

[jc-2002]

Step 1 completed - I'm now registered as a business seller.