Private Sales and HMRC

[hunkee1]

Hi there, 

just wondering if someone could maybe share a little advice with me please ? 
I Do receive disability benefits for a Genuine Brain condition which I am going to be getting an operation for to help! 
in the meantime, I have had help and have sold a few items I didn't need! 
a Sim Card, Wifi boosters that didn't work in my house and I also had a box of earphones which are really sought after, I bought them ages ago as Faulty or Spares, It turned out about 12-15 sets were actually brand new, So I sold them to get rid of them as they'd been lying about for ages! 
When I check my sales, It's about 18 items and it says I've made about £1900 

Im a bit worried that eBay will contact HMRC in January due to the amount! I'm Sure eBay have taken fees or listing fees and they take these from a different account from the one I use for everyday use! 
As this was stuff I had lying about and I was clearing stuff to tidy my house Is it Likely that HMRC will contact me or is it really Business sellers who are making a proper income ? I am just a Private Seller and only sold those items, I have only sold random bits and pieces in the past, This is the most I've sold, and I haven't sold anything more! I'm just worried if HMRC Get involved then the DWP may also get involved! It's kinda stressing me! 
if the HMRC did contact me I would literally be telling them my Profit was 'Nil' as I just got my money back for the items! 
do you think I have anything to be concerned about or should I just forget about it ? It's not over 30 items and with Listing Fees, Postage, and other money eBay have taken off me I'm probably very much closer to their £1740 odd limit! 

Any Help Much appreciated 👍🏻

[magpiecorner1]

Not obvious to me that it will cover the tax period 2023/24.

If the reporting begins 2024 can you please explain how does it apply to sales in 2023, which which be 9 months of the 2023/24 tax year.

[magpiecorner1]

My understanding was that, whilst part of an OECD agreement, it is an EU directive,  EU 2121/514 that fixed the limit of 30 items and 2000 Euros, which the UK Government adopted, leaving the quantity and fixing the amount at £1740, approximately 2000 Euros at the time of adoption.

I was also under the impression that the start date was also part of the directive, again adopted  by UK, but I could be wrong about that.

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[1956glyn]

followed by " Only you know what benefits you claim so maybe google to see if they will indeed be affected by your Ebay sales".

[btr.style]

Fair enough 

[*vyolla*]

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@magpiecorner1 wrote:

Not obvious to me that it will cover the tax period 2023/24.

If the reporting begins 2024 can you please explain how does it apply to sales in 2023, which which be 9 months of the 2023/24 tax year.

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First off, UK tax years run from April to April, apologies if anybody was unaware of this. 

eBay's reporting covers the period starting January 1st 2024.

So, eBay's reporting period will cover the 23/24 tax year because Jan, Feb and March 2024 fall into the 23/24 tax year.

[justmyj-7]

Correct if any ebayer as made any decent sales from January 2024 to January 2025 just submit a tax return . 

Ebay will.only be reporting the last 12 months figures but hmrc can ask for more if they think you lr hiding something. 

Better to be safe than sorry

[papso22]

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@justmyj-7 wrote:

Correct if any ebayer as made any decent sales from January 2024 to January 2025 just submit a tax return . 

Ebay will.only be reporting the last 12 months figures but hmrc can ask for more if they think you lr hiding something. 

Better to be safe than sorry

---

No!

Genuine private sellers do not need to, and should not do, a tax return, regardless of whether their sales are reported to HMRC or not.

[hunkee1]

Thank you for your Kind Words, Not exactly looking forward to Deep Brain Stimulation 😬👀 But it's my last option for the condition I have!

I hope you're well and things are good with you ☺️👍🏻

[hunkee1]

Hi there, 

I have gone through my Financial Statements from eBay, added up my payouts from Jan 2024 to Now (which I no longer sell) and the Total is £1673

so this obviously falls below the £1700 and 30 items as it was probably 16/17 items! 
but some people say It's a Max of £1000 you can sell and others say £1740 So I'm kinda confused! 
any Clarification would be appreciated,

thanks again 👍🏻

[justmyj-7]

If you had for example 45 sales and made a few hundred quid I doubt hmrc
would be interested.
But by law you can earn up.to a.£1000 and not declare it

[sml192]

£1,000 is the trading allowance for business sellers. 

2,000 euros, which is approximately £1,740, and 30 items arr the thresholds at which eBay and other platforms has to report your sales to HMRC (applies to both private and business sellers).

[justmyj-7]

Basically if you go over this better declaring between Jan 2024 and Jan
2025 better.be safe than.sorry

[sml192]

A genuine private seller, selling only personal possessions, doesn't need to declare anything or do a tax return. 

They do need to ensure that their sales do not conform to any of HMRC's 'badges of trade' though. 

[0797macki]

I can understand them wanting to tax actual business or people buying just to sell on and profit? but if its just your stuff you have worn and want to recoup part of the value? 

[0797macki]

I hope you're right. it's very off putting! 

[justmyj-7]

They might question it

[crg_music]

If you are genuinely not running as a business then have nothing to worry about. You just need to be honest and any investigation would ultimately be a waste of time.

I very much doubt hmrc will be coming for people selling a couple of grand as a 1 off. Now make that several grand they might come for you. Would be a massive expense chasing the odd bit of tax that would cost more to chase than would be returned. 

Now if you were on benefits and had 50k of sales reported by ebay you would have issues. 

But yeah forget about it, keep records of selling costs etc just incase and focus on your health, you are not the people these rules are there to catch.

[vinylscot]

I'm not responding here to be awkward, more to highlight a "grey area".

You are posting from a business account. I don't know if you also have a private account. However, you may well have a private collection of items similar to those you are selling on the business account. (This will apply to many business/private sellers - it's only natural that you have an interest in the area of your business.)

Now, let's say you decide to sell your private collection, on a private account, one by one, fully in accordance with both the law and eBay rules.

What chance do you think you'll have of convincing HMRC that these are private sales, and not business sales being put through your private account?

I'm in precisely that situation. My accountant reckons I'll have next to no chance of convincing HMRC, if they come after me individually. I can hope that they will just accept my declaration in my tax return, but if they decide to investigate further, I don't really stand much chance. 

I would imagine that will be the situation with many people being forced to pay tax for which they are really not liable. My own personal record collection goes back over fifty years, and there is no way I can provide receipts for almost 10,000 items purchased over that period. I can understand HMRC jumping to conclusions, but I do hope they are aware of situations like this, and they will deal with it sensibly. My accountant is not confident of this.

[crg_music]

Yeah that is certainly a shady area and less straight forward than the op's matter. Assumably you are talking far more than a couple of grand a year.  

I think if I sold any personal stuff now I'd just get my brother to sell it for me.

As far as I see it you can either carry on in the knowledge you might have to explain yourself or set off the collection against your profits but then that would become stock and taxable.

Now I dont know exactly how that works but ive done it with various items and did not have receipts. Maybe it was wrong? but it was at a different time. I think I just valued things on ebay and used that. It was fair after all.

You can get years worth of bank and credit card data by sending a subject access request.

I just needed a couple of bits and bank sent me 20 years worth of everything. A stack of statements with payments to record shops couldn't do any harm.

I must stress though everything above is my opinion, I'm far from an expert and your accountant knows far more about it than I do.

I personally do live my life by ear and deal with it when it happens so probably not the right person to be advising a lot of people, most that think the same wont be worrying about it.... 

[theelench]

I think you're quite right to highlight this 'grey area' as it could affect more private sellers than some business sellers imagine and IMO their lack of understanding of it causes some of the friction around "private" sellers in the second-hand area of ebay. 

It's also still an un-answered question when it comes to the new HMRC reporting rules.  Again, only my opinion because HMRC has moved the goal posts in relation to selling personal possessions.  Whether selling them at a boot-fair,  an auction house or anywhere else, it's only ever been in truly exceptional circumstances that HMRC has intervened, until now.

How many thousands of collectors have amassed collections of every type of 'collectable'?   Safe in the knowledge that selling their own possessions was always tax free?  But from 1/1/25, with little warning, we are supposed to be able to prove that we are selling our collections and not carrying on a long-term tax evading business.  IMO that is a huge change in emphasis putting most collectors at risk of becoming suspect in the eyes of HMRC and because of this shift, unable to prove their innocence unless we had the foresight to keep every purchase receipt and sales/expenses record.

You mention your collection of 10,000 records quite rightly.  I'm in the same grey area with about 250 glass items for sale, having sold another couple of hundred over about ten years on ebay.  How I came to have 500 pieces of vintage glass in a one bedroom flat is a long story, going back to the '80s (which I won't bore you with) .  When I started selling them off sales on ebay were good and I expected they would be gone in about 5 years.  Leaving me with a modest collection that my heirs would have little trouble disposing of.  Is it my fault ebay sales have been in decline for the rest of that time and they are not already sold?

HMRC could well query my 10 year selling history and that for part of that time I've been selling on 2 sites, albeit slowly on both.

I think that after an initial 'softly softly' approach to get this change accepted, if that materialises at all, cost  cutting will kick-in and it will become the norm that anyone selling anything in bulk will be regarded as being a business unless they can prove otherwise.  Which will be grossly unfair to millions of my generation who will, like you and me be taxed on the sale of their personal possessions solely because we cannot possibly prove our innocence.