eBay now asking for NI numbers

[btr.style]

I set up a new private account not long back for selling off genuinely unwanted goods (as I said before, better off selling them on a private account than paying full fees or watering down the clothing business selling nans old china stuff). 

30 sales made and it came up saying I have to update my account and provide NI number. Fine, I've nothing to hide so I did. 

So it seems the rollout has started. Probably just new accounts when they hit 30 sales and won't be for established accounts for some time maybe. 

It first popped up on the app and that page was where I got to. I also had an email about it. 

So it seems now, anyone wanting to open a private account to sell stuff as a side hustle had best be prepared to have to give their NI numbers once they reach 30 sales. 

Probably will be for all sellers to have to provide it soon surely?

[kath3735_wxmjn]

There is an old saying that fits 'there are none so blind as those who will not see'.  You can keep on explaining until the cows come home but some people will just not accept the truth.  When they ask i will give them my NI number, lets face it half the bl..dy world has it and any hackers are just as liable to get it from one of those sources as they are e bay.  I think personally some people are either being petty or they have something to hide.

[theelench]

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@myriad*seller wrote:

Who says they will release your money after 180 days?

They may be entitled to hold the funds permanently from Jan 2025

Otherwise, business sellers masquerading as private sellers will all just follow your example, knowing they would be paid out in 6 months....

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That may be the case if I had reached either of the thresholds stipulated by HMRC (30 items &/or £1700) during the relevant reporting period (1/1/24 - 31/12/24) making ebay legally required to report my selling activity to them.

So far this year ebay have produced the magnificent result for me of 4 sales with a total gross value of £52.50 .

Therefore ebay is not required to report anything to them on my behalf and they have no legal basis for witholding any funds owed to me after a reasonable time for allowing claims against my balance held by them.

As you say in your post #75.

"It's in the T&C's"

I'll allow ebay up to 180 days to send the funds they owe me to my bank account, although with my long record of problem free selling on ebay I would expect them sent far earlier, if ebay was acting reasonably.

[kempseykate]

Why do you think 'half the world' has your NI number? *

There are a very limited amount of people that have my NI number - HMRC, DWP, pension companies. Not sure there are many more than that - and I would trust them to keep it safe more than I would ebay.

*Unless of course you were one of the Vinted sellers that had it visible on their profile for the whole world to see 😞

[exponential_developments]

How naive, good luck if it goes walkabout.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

Maybe not 'half the world' but during my long long working life i had to give it to my employers and as i often worked two jobs that doubled the amount of people who would have access to it.  I have two private pensions as well as my state one and both those operating them were switched by the pension providers.   Not so sure that i trust the government departments to keep the info any safer than a private one (and i used to be a government worker)   (e bay is my only selling site, too lazy to mess around with more than one)

[kath3735_wxmjn]

definitely not naive, realistic maybe.  Wonder how so many fake passports, drivers licences etc get out into the general domain.  Could it be that hackers and scammers are better than the people employed by the government??   It is up to the individual to decide if they want to comply with e bay/HMRC requirements or to stop selling on the site, i prefer to keep selling.

[exponential_developments]

Cool, i'll be closing my account.

[theelench]

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@kath3735_wxmjn wrote:

It is up to the individual to decide if they want to comply with e bay/HMRC requirements or to stop selling on the site, i prefer to keep selling.

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I agree with you, it is for the individual to decide, but I think you're wrong when, in your earlier post #81,  you say that anyone who isn't willing to comply is "...either being petty or has something to hide."

It's often been pointed out on similar threads that it's very likely that businesses trading on private accounts will already be declaring their profits to HMRC and paying their due taxes, so no great gain in tax revenue from that angle?

That leaves (a guesstimate admittedly) of perhaps 90% of private sellers who might have indulged in some amateurish, low level tax evasion by trawling their local boot-fairs / charity shops and trading their finds on ebay.

Again only my guess, but unless they are well organised, lucky in their finds and doing this as a full-time job, being realistic how much profit are they actually making ?

You, yourself have said that selling your own unwanted property and that of all your family doesn't amount to huge numbers of listings or a great deal of money.

So HMRC trawls the data ebay sends them and identifies similar people it thinks are trading and sends them a tax return.  Another swathe of these traders will have no tax to pay simply because their income is still below the tax threshhold.

Some will have enough paper-work to show HMRC that they were, without doubt, not trading but disposing of stuff collected over years. 

Yet more of those that are left will put their hands up admit they made a "mistake" in not declaring their ebay trading income, but if they admit trading can immediately claim the "Hobby Seller" £1000 Allowance.  So probably not much tax to be gained there in many cases either.

I begin to wonder just how much HMRC will gain from what, to me, is a rash decision to insist that every private seller hands over their NINO to ebay and if it's using a sledge hammer to crack a nut.

I think it's also worth remembering that older people tend to have more "principals" than those struggling to earn a living.   The govt. has been pilloried for taking the WFA away from 10 million pensioners.  There will be more embarassing head-lines if HMRC starts dragging them into court because they refuse to pay tax for selling their family heirlooms because they haven't got receipts to prove their innocence, contrary to the widely held belief that one is innocent until the accuser proves your guilt.

At the end of the day, we will all suffer from what I think is a short-sighted decision by the treasury.  That includes ebay buyers and sellers (both business and private), ebay itself and even the charities that feed the food-chain.  For me it has nothing to do with being petty or having anything to hide, it is just that I won't give my NINO to a foreign company.

We've both had numerous jobs and have various pensions, but like me I would think that all yours have, so far, been based in the UK.  You think the risk to your security is worthwhile to continue selling here.  I don't and it's as simple as that, nothing to do with anything else.

The spell-check's still broken !!!!

[lucy_farmer]

'.......because they haven't got receipts to prove their innocence.....'

This is what bugs me about the whole 'keeping receipts ' stuff.

Surely should be the other way around? What I mean is :

If you bought things *for yourself* why would you keep the receipt? (unless it was something with a guarentee period, but even that runs out....)

If you were given something as a gift, you wouldn't have a receipt.

If you inherited something from a family member, you wouldn't have a receipt.

So how can something you have no need or even ability to get hold of in the first place, be used as a means to prove one's innocence ?

I just don't get the logic of it.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

A point i was trying to make was that if hackers/criminals want your number they will be able to get it and that is regardless of where you have worked or how many people have your numbers.  Just look at all the fake e mails people get, where do they get your e mail address from or bank details.   Then you have the crims who get numbers just from workers of any of the companies that legally have it, including government employees.   Is it really any different to giving your bank details to a foreign company??  I would much prefer that the government had not decided to come after on line sellers but it is what it is.  I will probably be clobbered by them just because of the variety of stuff i am selling for my relatives.  We  do not get much money from these sales but it adds up, i will probably not be anywhere near the limit of £ but i am already well over the 30 items.      By the way you misrepresented what i actually said, it was ' SOME people are being petty or have something to hide'  I stand by that comment, some may be doing out of principle or a real fear of being hacked but that again is only SOME, in my opinion.

[exponential_developments]

"real fear of being hacked", have a read of the data leak ebay had in 2014.......

Listening to you it's like saying, i won't ware a seat belt on this journey because the chance of my head going through the windscreen is close to zero, but the odds start to change with each journey.

For the amount of money you gain from what you sell, is that amount worth the eventuality of having to deal with the next data breach?

Ps......i asked on the weekly chat thing, and no answer was given, you would think this should be a priority, even just to be decent and put peoples minds at rest, but as expected it was brushed off as not important.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

but the same could be said of any firm that has your details.  Banks, the NHS etc have had serious data breaches.  It happens and unfortunately will continue to happen, so do you avoid having anything to do with any organisation that uses a computer??   Even just coming on here to comment is putting your self out in the big world for someone to scam/hack you.     My point is that any organisation/person can be hacked whether here or overseas, whether a large company or a small individual.  

[ett1954]

"At the end of the day, we will all suffer from what I think is a short-sighted decision by the treasury." - This is nothing to do with a decision made by the treasury or HMRC.  As has been pointed out previously this is an international agreement whereby countries can identify individuals or companies moving money by digital means both nationally and internationally in an effort to identify criminality such as money laundering, child exploitation, people and drug trafficking, and of course tax evasion as well as a host of other criminal activities.

Nobody knows at the moment how deep HMRC will go into the tax evasion part; only time will tell.  eBay are only following the terms of the agreement signed by the the 35+ countries of the OECD as instructed by HMRC.  The other countries will be doing the same and consolidating their information.

".....it is just that I won't give my NINO to a foreign company." - Most western foreign companies work under strict data protection laws which if contravened could put them out of business.  eBay UK work within the data protection laws laid down in the UK the same as any other UK business.

You relate to a data breach of eBay in 2014 - a lot has changed in the last 10 years.  The NHS has had multiple data breaches since then where confidential information has been placed on the dark web; the latest in June this year, another in 2022.  What makes you think UK companies and government agencies are any better at protecting your information.  Most data breaches of an individual's information are caused by the individual themselves by the actions they have taken.

[exponential_developments]

Yes i agree, so you keep it to a minimum, like the car journey analogy i used, if ebay had the decency to come on here and say how they are to protect ones data, then that at least would be something positive.

Probaby all that will happen is one day we will recieve an email with a link telling us to supply a NINO,and i'll be saying "NINO NO NO"

[exponential_developments]

Your argument is null and void, not once have i said any organisation is better or worse, it's quantity and odds....................AND my choice, ebay had a leak due to managers screwing up, have made no attenpt to reduce my negative thoughts, and for the money on here i don't find it worth the risk, now i'm happy to respect you opinion, but how come you wish to change mine ?

[stormatic2015]

I wonder what happens if you put in the wrong or fake NI number.

Will it conflict with other accounts, EG Someone uses my NINO and they did something bad on eBay, will my account be resitricted because of a potental linked account?

Also Is there any validation checking for NINO, EG has to be the same birth name on HMRC as the NINO. Otherwise what is stopping me providing a fake NINO and trading for a year until HMRC complain it is not right. And if they do complain who is liable eBay or the seller. Will they then stop the sellers account, thats even if its their responsibility as it ends at providing HMRC with the info.

[ett1954]

"now i'm happy to respect you opinion, but how come you wish to change mine ?" - strange comment; I wasn't responding to you!

I was merely highlighting some misconceptions to another poster.

[theelench]

I think it's because that's the way the tax system evolved into what it is today.  When income tax was first introduced (on the relatively rich to help pay for the Napoleonic Wars?), it was simple  --  income over £xxx the tax due was £x.

As most taxes tend to do, the net was cast ever wider and exemptions became necessary to make it fairer to people with different circumstances.  These have turned into what we now call "Allowances" such as the cost of the materials to make whatever was sold to make the profit. 

Someone in the country might cut Willow twigs to make fences for next to nothing.  Someone in a town would have to buy the twigs in from the countryside, so they were Allowed the cost as a deduction against their profit.  But HMRC would want to see proof of purchase before allowing it.

This measure is, IMO, for the first time trying to bring the sale of personal possessions into the tax system and is using the now widespread use of Allowances, with proof of purchase, to do that.  

Until now if you wanted to claim an allowance, going forward, you kept the proof of purchase to do so.  This is new in that HMRC has moved the goal-posts on what it will consider personal possessions and their sale going forward, but is still likely to insist that without proof of purchase, which was not considered necessary at the time, no allowance will be made.  

[exponential_developments]

Erm, it's me that has mentioned 2014 on several occasions.

[lucy_farmer]

Had a (probably slightly paranoid!) thought about the connection between getting NINOs, and the end of *CASH* on collection.

The end of CoC is a pretty pointless move now, for private sales anyway, as there's no longer any fees to avoid.

But if you have sold some stuff as CoC, ebay have no financial hold over you to make you input your NINO.

(Some sellers have discovered that their funds are held *until* they've input their number)

OK, ebay may stop you putting any more stuff on the site, but existing sellers already doing CoC can't be forced ...  ??