EBay asking for national insurance number

[raik1performance]

Hi everyone, I recently joined for like 1 month and I start selling as a private seller , and now eBay is asking me to provide national insurance number.

"New UK digital sales reporting legislation requires sellers with 30 or more sales, or who have sales exceeding £1740 in a calendar year, to register this information"

[wintersdawn1]

• If you are selling unwanted personal possessions such as old toys or clothes, this would not be classed as trading or miscellaneous income, and there is usually no tax to pay. In some circumstances there may be capital gains tax when selling valuable items such as jewellery, this is covered in our flowchart.

https://www.litrg.org.uk/news/selling-online-make-sure-you-keep-clear-records

 

Do I have to share information with HMRC?

From January 2024, new UK digital sales reporting rules require digital platforms like eBay to share information with them. However, this reporting doesn’t change your tax obligations.

On eBay, this should only affect newly registered accounts in 2024, which will extend to all accounts in 2025.

eBay will only report if you pass certain yearly sales thresholds:

• If your total sales on eBay exceed €2000, or roughly £1740, after fees.

• If you complete 30 or more sales transactions on eBay.

In general, selling personal items is not taxed if they’re below £6,000 and you’re not selling as part of a business.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/selling/selling-online-and-hmrc

[edwardian-dreams]

Wats the difference or connection between the 30 sales and the 1700£ total transactions ?

this is what I didn’t get

ive had more than 40 sales but nowhere near the £ value

??

[wintersdawn1]

I don't know how they relate but 30 sales seems low and will generate an awful lot of work for hmrc as even an occasional seller may go over 30 sales during the course of a year.

If a seller, over the course of year, sold 30 items x £5, that's only £150 but as they've reached the 30 sales limit ebay still have to pass their selling info to hmrc.

The £1740 limit makes a bit more sense as if the person works full time but also makes that sort of money from ebay they may be over their single person's tax allowance and so need to pay tax?  That said if its sales of personal possessions it still shouldn't be taxed unless its a single item worth more than £6,000 for capital gains tax.    I'm still not sure.

All am convinced about is in my own situation I'm only selling my own personal possessions that I no longer want so even if I go over the 30/£1740 limit I am not concerned.  I have detailed information of all my ebay sales going back over the last two years in a spreadsheet and everyone is something I bought at some point and then didn't need anymore so sold on ebay. 

[edwardian-dreams]

Yep me too

got 5 wardrobes in the house been declutterred at least three times over the last couple years and still finding stuff to sell 

not to mention the other clutter round the house

i have some lovely stuff as well as tat but no space physically or mentally anymore for it 

So likely to be more than 30 sales a year as I sell most stuff cheap mostly elsewhere now 

ah well

[wintersdawn1]

To be honest I don't think hmrc will be that interested in most genuine private sellers selling activity but I feel somewhat concerned for the private sellers who have been selling as a business for years and making good money.  If their selling proceeds haven't been declared up till now, things might not look too good for them once hmrc see their data.

I blame ebay to certain extent because they could have easily identified sellers who are registered as private but are trading but have not, possibly because they have made money out of them, although if registered as a business seller, ebay would have made much more so not sure.

[papso22]

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@edwardian-dreams wrote:

Wats the difference or connection between the 30 sales and the 1700£ total transactions ?

this is what I didn’t get

ive had more than 40 sales but nowhere near the £ value

??

---

They are independent thresholds, reach either and your sales are reported.  

[marina_est]

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@papso22 wrote:

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They are independent thresholds, reach either and your sales are reported.

---

Are we sure that this is true?

The reason I ask relates to my brother (who's account I don't intend to reveal).  He keeps an very accurate spreadsheet of all his transactions which clearly shows that in 2024 he made 45 sales for a total value of around £600.  Clearly, he has passed one of the two thresholds with more than 30 sales.  He is a Private seller disposing of unwanted personal items.

However, he hasn't received any emails from eBay about reporting to HMRC, they haven't asked for his NI number and if he goes to the Tax section under his Seller account it says "You haven’t received a Digital sales report yet."

Perhaps this is an oversight, but this seems unlikely.  Surely eBay don't look through account details manually!!!

I wonder if there are others in this situation?  Clearly, anyone who is will most likely act like my brother and keep very quiet about it so as not to alert eBay to their possible mistake.

[vinylscot]

There are a number of reasons for the 30 sales threshold.

One of the main ones is that eBay is not the only platform reporting these figures. Many sellers are selling on multiple platforms, and it wouldn't take Einstein to work out that you could avoid your data being reported if you sold £1600 on eBay, £1600 on Vinted, £1600 on eBid, etc. Reporting the number of transactions helps close that obvious loophole.

It really does not create any more work for HMRC. As long as sellers have provided their NINO, their data will be applied automatically to their HMRC records, without any human involvement at all. Those who refuse to provided NINOs may have their cases flagged up at HMRC for further investigation, as the most automated systems won't deal with their data. (At this point, we are still some way from human involvement, but there's a flag on your account now.)

They haven't just plucked the numbers out of thin air, and they're not just doing this to annoy people. There is method behind it.

This silly panic has gone on long enough. The correct information is all readily available, here and elsewhere. The only ones who should be worried are those who have been abusing the current situation. Everyone else, just relax!

[marina_est]

Did I ask about the reason for the 30 threshold?  No!

Did I suggest that the number had been produced to annoy people?  No!

Did I suggest that my brother was panicking?  No!  Very clearly he doesn't have any tax to pay.

He is perplexed as to why the "...correct information..." which is indeed "...readily available, here and elsewhere." doesn't seem to be correct.

When in January he calculated his total sales for 2024 he realised that he had exceeded the 30 sales threshold (a value he got from the "correct information") and expected eBay to ask him for his NI number before the end of January this year (a date from the "correct information").

It is now very nearly the end of March and he remains perplexed.  He isn't worried, or panicked or anything of this nature, simply unsure what to make of the discrepancy between the "correct information" and his experience.

He doesn't intend to bother eBay CS about this because what is the point of confusing those hopeless fools; it will only create complexity.

As I see it, there are only two possibilities:

1. There is a bug in eBay's software which has caused some accounts (possibly only a tiny number) to not be reported when they should have been.  We all know how often eBay software can't correctly carry out the simplest calculations so this may well be true.
2. The values in the "correct information" are not actually correct.  For example, perhaps HMRC had a very nasty shock when they found out how many small accounts - which were unlikely to have a tax liability -would be reported to them so they quietly told eBay to use higher thresholds at least for the first year until HMRC can streamline their system.

[*devils.advocate*]

And also sites like Airbnb where these individual limits could possibly easily be exceeded.

The 30 items figure doesn't necessarily fit sites like eBay - but like all "one size fits all", there are always anomalies.

[vinylscot]

Did I respond directly to you, and to you alone? - No!

[crafty6272]

Eh lost track of this what am I supposed to have done to get a snappy reply
like that 🤷‍♀️

[buffster1963]

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@crafty6272 wrote:
Eh lost track of this what am I supposed to have done to get a snappy reply
like that 🤷‍♀️

---

That reply was not to you. 

[kath3735_wxmjn]

I do wish people would look at who is being responded to before getting upset (in the header under the current posters name for anyone who does not know).  'vinylscot' gave a response to the original poster about the 30 item rule,  @marina_est  took it personally as if he had responded to them and went into a huff, he responded to them and now you have taken that response as a 'snappy' one to you!!!   The whole point really is that there is plenty of threads on the forum that explain (and actually even often give links to HMRC site) where this is all explained, it is an either/or situation with the limits.    They were supposed to start for everyone from Jan 2024 but that became only for new sellers and everyone else is being brought in this year which is what is happening.  I got asked for mine a couple of weeks ago when i reached the 30 limit.

[marina_est]

My apologies to vinylscot, I did indeed not notice that it was a general reply and not specifically to me.  I will try to pay more attention to this in future.

[papso22]

The reason your brother has not been included in the reports, or asked to provide his NI number yet, is because HMRC gave online portals like ebay extra time to deal with accounts that were established before 1st Jan 2024.  They are now asking those accounts for the NI number, bit by bit.  They will get round to him eventually.  

[jckl1957]

I was asked for mine around the same time @kath3735_wxmjn which must have been after I sold 30 items - I am up to 34 now this year.

What I don't understand is why selling 30 items this year triggered the request.

My understanding (I am very happy yo be corrected if this is wrong) is that Ebay had to report sales of all members who reached the 30 items/£1740 limit during January to December 2024.

It will be interesting, when they send my Digital sales report to see if they have reported last years sales or this years.

[sml192]

For sellers registered before 1st January 2024 eBay is required to complete due diligence (obtaining and verifying NI number, etc) by 31st December 2025 and then report the sales for both 2024 and 2025 by 31st January 2026.

[grand-de-bazaar]

Thank you I did sort out
Sent from my iPhone

[wintersdawn1]

I haven't come across this info before, do you have a link where you read it?  Thanks.