'You have then taken this stuff and decided to sell it. That is a business.'

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'Taken'? 

Nope, we've been given stuff (2nd hand, used stuff) by people who are dead . If those dead people didn't want us to have it they'd have left instructions to do something else with it. These are now *our* items. (whether we wanted them or not...!)

This is not 'business'.

HMRC are very clear that *personal possessions* are untaxable when sold - unless you hit the £6000.00 inheritance tax threshhold. And none of this stuff (in our case) is a single item- or a collection- worth anywhere near 1% of that!

'This would be what they are calling side hustles right now, and they are cracking down on.'

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Now ,I thought that 'side hustles' (a horrid phrase  🤢 for doing part-time self-employment) were business activites?

Which are frequently described as 'buying, making or growing things for sale' or 'providing services for payment'.

Inheriting a load of old tosh is none of the above.

I'm with @vinylscot  on this one ; I think you're purposefully using lots of cod-legalese to worry genuine private sellers that they're about to get stamped on by HMRC.  

When they're not going to be.

Though I do agree with you that AI will (eventually) get good enough to pick out and clamp-down on psuedo-private sellers who sell loads and loads of *new* things, loads of *similar* things and loads of consumables (which are logically impossible to be 2nd hand) That ain't a problem to me and many others on here... but winding up genuine and worried private sellers is cruel.