Have 80% off sellers fees been discontinued?

[alfieoscar74]

I have not had any discounts on sellers fees since February, yet friends and family are still receiving them. Is anyone having the same experience?

[cobwebcottage]

You seem to be selling an awful lot of watches for a seller on a private account.

[roger_roger_over_and_nowt]

"Have 80% off sellers fees been discontinued?"

I can only live in hope.

[mx5bitz_uk]

'You seem to be selling an awful lot of watches for a seller on a private account.'

I'm not bargainbuy31 but so what?, this thread is about current ebay fees and the loss of the promotional rates most of us have, rightly or wrongly, got quite used to. 

You, as a business seller pay less seller fees to ebay at the current rates than private sellers but considerably more than the old promotional, private seller rates. I can understand why that may have been annoying but the bigger picture here is actually going to screw all of us and ebay too.

I have heard today that ebay are going to deem anyone who sells more than £1000 worth of items in a year, as liable to pay tax. I assume this means that ebay will be deducting tax at source? I don't know but there is a similar process established in Germany, I believe. Anyway, there is a liklihood that ebay registered business sellers will likely be forced to pay tax at source too, don't you think? 

This has been a great platform to buy and sell on for a number of years but it seems the whole environment is about to be shafted.

I am hoping that someone with more genuine knowledge of the situation than me can respond to my post in a way that clarifies this matter.            

[cobwebcottage]

My reply was not to you but anyhow. 

'You, as a business seller pay less seller fees to ebay at the current rates than private sellers but considerably more than the old promotional, private seller rates.'  Wrong, we pay more.

The whole issue about Ebay and others reporting to HMRC is not going to change anything for businesses. Tax will not be deducted at source. How can it be when you don't know how much you will earn each year? The clamp down will be on sellers who are not completing tax returns when they should. If you are only selling off your own private items then the odds are nothing will change. There are quite a few posts on this which go in to greater details if you need more information.

[rainbowtrax]

Ebay are not, and are not about to start, collecting income tax at source. HMRC deal with it as they are the ones who receive details of all of a seller's other earnings to determine what and whether tax needs to be paid.

Ebay also don't deem anyone who sells more than £1,000 worth a year to be liable for tax. Again, that's down to HMRC and you're getting the figures for two different things confused.

IF you are trading then HMRC give you a tax free trading allowance of £1,000 turnover before they need to know about it. That's IF you are trading, not if you are selling your own old possessions. If you're not trading then it doesn't apply to you.

The other thing is that ebay will now be obliged to disclose sales figures to HMRC. That will kick in at either 30 items a year or €2000 annual sales (around £1,700). Again, HMRC then decide on any tax you need to pay, not ebay. Again, if you're not trading and are just selling your own old possessions then you have nothing to pay until you hit certain high value exceptions that mean other tax is due. If you are trading then you need to keep records to prove your profits so that you don't risk HMRC over-estimating the tax that's due.

[mx5bitz_uk]

HRMC have demonstrated a propensity to make incredibly poor judgement on Tax, as have have other supposed public services on other, similarly associated matters. This country is a mess because it's sense of priorities and abilities are juxtopositional.  Essentially in this context, limited ability to retrieve too much tax money from people that should not be paying it, for the benefit of people and facilities that do not deserve it! As a man of a certain age, I sincerely ask anyone to provide me with a genuinely good cause to consider supporting with my tax money or otherwise? I would love to have a plethora of worthwhile people/causes to consider, worthy of my efforts/contribution but I suspect the list would be very, very short. Back in the day we had down in their luck tramps, invariably male, who deserved genuine support; who do we have now?    

Sorry, a slight digression from the main subject. We are all doomed!!!! 

Thank you for your reply but it did really not say a lot, did it? To suggest that someone selling £1000 of items a year, should automatically be exposed to tax is obviously absurd! 

[ejk52]

For your information I am selling them on behalf of someone who has gone into a care home.
Sent from my iPad

[rainbowtrax]

It said the facts which is what you wanted. There's not a lot else to say really.

The £1000 trading allowance is not new, that's been the case for a fair while. It's actually a bonus compared to it previously not existing. If you're trading then obviously you need to declare it but you won't pay tax if your total earnings are within your tax free allowance. Surely we're all exposed to tax if we have an income. It's just that self-employed earnings have to be submitted rather than tax being taken as PAYE. 

[mx5bitz_uk]

What is said, Mr business seller?

I heard about this supposed £1000 a year allowance for private sellers on ebay today.

I am fully aware of tax law but it must be said that the biggest avoiders of tax are businesses, not individuals.

On Ebay,businesses pay less fees in theory but where is the tax mandate?

I am sure you declare everything you sell and pay all tax due but am confident that this would be a rarity.   

[rainbowtrax]

It's not a £1,000 tax allowance for private sellers. There is no such thing. As I said before it's a £1,000 trading allowance for those trading. It's nothing new. It's aimed at small hobby sellers - who are still classed as trading. People are just getting confused and panicking due to the new rules of disclosure that ebay now have to abide by. Nothing has changed in what needs to be declared for either private or business sellers.

As I only sell on ebay, I'd be a bit stupid not to declare it as all the details are recorded for anyone to see and have been for years.

[pg_kicks]

This hasnt got anything to due with tax avoidance though, its all down to tax evasion.

Whilst I think everyone agrees rules and loopholes should be closed for avoidance this new set of rules or improvement on the rules will cut on the evasion which is done more by smaller businesses than the larger which can pay very expensive accountants to find loopholes. 

[supremeserf]

'As I only sell on ebay, I'd be a bit stupid not to declare it as all the details are recorded for anyone to see and have been for years.'

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I don't think you are stupid for one moment and neither would I expect you to avoid paying any tax due but in truth the idea that you would be nailed for tax because of ebay records is very, very unlikely. Even if someone reported you specifically with evidence, the tax office is so overworked with big fish that your entrepreneurial efforts would most likely be ignored.

The £1000 turnover threshold per annum for private sellers to be brought to HMRC attention is ridiculous; even a  £1000 profit per annum threshold is ridiculous. I have some experience of how these people operate with recovery of money from the most obvious situations ie. company liquidation and their efforts are laughable. So much unpaid income tax and VAT written off as to make your hair curl!     

Sorry for the ID change by the way; I have about five and even signing in to the ebay ID I intend to reply with does not preclude ebay linking my reply to another random ID. 

[hersant60]

Shifted all my stuff to Vinted

[victortardis]

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@mx5bitz_uk wrote:

 Back in the day we had down in their luck tramps, invariably male, who deserved genuine support; who do we have now?    

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Now we have chinese restaurants only taking cash, big sign on the door stating  " Cash only no cards".

I wonder what the taxman will do about that until cash is finally phased out.

[merchantofzen]

I am reporting back to say that all five of my ebay accounts received an 80% off fees offer this morning.

It would seem that we may have jumped the gun with our assumptions and ebay just took a couple of weeks off.

Hope back to normal for everyone else too.

I am also struggling with the idea of ebay reporting private sellers with a turnover of £1k+ per annum to HMRC. I've had no official notification of this, so perhaps pie in the sky too.       

[jckl1957]

All the details are here - have a read.

There is a lot of misinformation about so it's best to get it from Ebay.

UK digital sales reporting | eBay.

[milly80_4]

Well I've not had a 70 or 80% offer for 12 months I'm a private seller  so mars just private sellers who aren't getting any offers I used to save the odd item I wanted to sell but having to look elsewhere to sell it's a real shame eBay was my go to for buying and with this issue selling.  It's a shame looks like profit comes first there must be a balance but eBay are simply asking too much 

[capitalomnibus]

Well low an behold I got the email at 07:50 this morning with the 80% off. I guess as another person put it, ebay seems to hold out with it over the Christmas period as they know people would have loads of presents etc. to flog

[reno08]

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@merchantofzen wrote:

I am reporting back to say that all five of my ebay accounts received an 80% off fees offer this morning.

It would seem that we may have jumped the gun with our assumptions and ebay just took a couple of weeks off.

Hope back to normal for everyone else too.

Not for me. Had been getting them every other week for ages.

My account is in good standing and I can't see a reason why that might be.

I'll look into Vinted instead, which I would never have bothered to do since my eBay habits were quite set. Their loss ...

[reassuringly.crazy]

To answer the original question 'Have 80% off sellers fees been discontinued?' the answer is no. 

Take a look at the seller dashboard. There are reasons why discounts aren't offered, negative feedback and seller returns count against you. Someone I know had a dispute with a buyer who was difficult. As a result he lost his discount fee offers. 

I saw a lot of people posting in early January about them not receiving an offer and then saying all the things they were going to do, or not do.  Reminds me of all the celebrities that said they would leave the US if Trump became president (last time and this time) but I disgress. The only addiction stronger than selling fee discounts is eBay itself. Remember all the complaints when eBay ditched PayPal for receiving payments? Well, that's settled down now and I don't see complaints any more, even though it still takes a day longer for the money to hit the bank account. It was the holiday season, Christmas and new year. When the usual discount didn't appear I wondered if it was because of the holiday, and around a week later the seller fee discount offer appeared. 

My friend gets 80% seller fee discounts. I used to, but now I get 70%.  No idea why. We would need hundreds or thousands of examples to try and figure out why. I'm not going to get upset about 10%, there's nothing I can do about it. I saw some people talk about setting up new  accounts. Aren't buyers wary of new accounts? I know I am. As for the person who said the eBay rep told them they're not continuing with the seller fee discounts, let's see what happens on Friday . I expect another fee discount offer. That would mean the eBay rep is talking out of their backside. They probably make stuff up as they go along to get people off the phone. 

I think people need to learn to chill a little and not jump to negative conclusions all the time. There was a vaguely interesting piece on radio 4 about a small US town that became VERY nasty towards one family who had decided to go camping, based on one twitter comment that turned out to be false. We are all guilty of jumping to conclusions about things, but misinformation and lies don't help anyone. I think we should be more concerned about the alleged reporting of eBay sales to the government for tax purposes. That is something to be annoyed about. Maybe that's why people have multiple accounts! 😄