Many thanks for the shows of support, I’d just like to make a few further points.
The Daily Mail article states that “HMRC has earmarked £36.69 million, including 24 full-time staff, to enforce this new measure.” Where has that money come from? Taxpayers. This means of course that HMRC now has to recover £36.69 million before they can effectively break even. Given that need for a result they’ll no doubt use draconian measures during their “clampdown” and that’s putting it mildly. This will assuredly delight some of the ‘I hope-they-throw-the-book-at-them-bring-back-hanging’ brigade present on this board. But who precisely will HMRC be clamping down on? What type of person?
Ask yourself this simple question:
Which of the following types of individuals, as per the Daily Mail / HMRC, are most likely to be using eBay as a ‘side hustle’?:
A) One of the thousands of Porsche driving, Rolex wearing shysters looking to earn fat stacks so that they can have a fourth holiday in the Bahamas during the current tax year
OR
B) One of the thousands of ordinary people that are slaving long hours in a minimum wage job trying to make ends meet in a chronic recession just so they can heat their homes this winter.
I think - if a moment of thought is given - we know the answer. The Posche drivers are imaginary whilst the ordinary people are all too real.
It has been mentioned by another poster that every 4 or 5 years there’s a HMRC eBay clampdown. It’s no coincidence that every 4 or 5 years there’s also a General Election because nothing plays better with an electorate than a bit of ‘Hammer The Tax Dodgers!’. Lo and behold, surprise surprise, we currently have a government looking like they are about to lose a landslide election in 12 months time and they’ve just had HMRC announce a tax clampdown. Only on the most vulnerable. easily traceable people will be targeted though obviously. We wouldn’t want to upset the fat cats living in their seemingly unlocateable ivory towers now would we?
I also note that there are fellow media Sellers voicing their opinions. Perhaps they ought to save their ire for the Music Magpie / Momox’s that have devastated the value of media with their ‘buy in bulk, sell in bulk, cheap as chips’ approach that small Sellers can’t hope to come close to competing with.
Buyers now also fully expect free P&P as part of the deal and where have they been taught to expect that? The Music Magpie / Momox / Amazon’s of this world that are big enough to broker cheaper postage deals with the Post Office directly or, in the case of Amazon, simply by having their own massive delivery fleet.
If people still want to insist that eBay - eBay of all places! - is the home to Porsche driving, Rolex wearing shysters then I wish you good luck, there’s no reasoning with you. The amount of effort required to list and fulfil orders on eBay has to be one of the lowest risk to reward ventures you could hope to take up and imagining that it’s an effective way of cheating the tax man whilst making a fortune as a consequence is beyond delusional.
Please try aiming any anger at the hidden people that work at the top of tax-evading / dodging corporations and not the easy, most vulnerable targets deliberately placed directly in front of you by people with vested interests in feathering their own nest via supporting the status quo.
Thank you and best wishes.
