HMRC - Selling on eBay and other selling platforms

[drinfinity]

Option A. Do nothing, which is what HMRC recommends.
Option B. Declare it on your self assessment, both revenue and expenses. The SA guidance will tell you not to do this as it is a waste of time since it is not taxable.
Option C. Take a variety of actions to disguise your trades so that they don’t get interfaced by EBay. These would be the same actions an unscrupulous trader would take to avoid paying tax, and might attract attention.

 

[Sackmycook]

From April this year, HMRC will be informed by Booking.com and Airbnb of our earnings from these platforms so, theoretically, they can check against our self-assessment figures. It's not an issue for us as we provide correct figures and genuinely believe they have bigger fish to fry.
I think that will be the case with Ebay too.

 

[JDC]

100% agree. The wife used to work DWP 15 years ago and they knew loads were on the fiddle. Couldn't do anything due to severe lack of staff of resources. The only way they caught people were either a tip off or a lucky dip into a claimant. I suppose most government departments are in a similar situation. What am I saying is, you would be unlucky to get busted when Amazon are massively under paying tax to the UK for the last whatever years due to said "loopholes".

 

[archersam]

I am in Italy a lot these days, on Booking.com and Airbnb the Italian government deduct their 22% tax BEFORE you get the money released by either platform. I guess this way it forces people to do proper bookkeeping as presumably expenses can be offset against the income.