Do you owe tax on eBay sales?

Are you supplementing your income by trading items on eBay, say, or selling old clothes on platforms such as Vinted? If so, you need to keep track of your activity because HM Revenue & Customs may want a slice of the cake.

New rules requiring the platforms to disclose more information about their users came into force earlier this year. Importantly, anyone genuinely selling their own possessions – a pair of jeans you never wear anymore, for example, or your old CDs – is unlikely to owe tax on the proceeds.

However, if you’re buying things in the hope of selling them at a profit – an increasingly popular “side hustle” – HMRC regards you as a trading business. Each year, you can sell up to £1,000 of items without worrying about tax, but thereafter you should be completing a selfassessment tax return, and you could face a bill.

Many people assume HMRC will never catch up with such activity. But with the platforms now required to share details of accounts that sell more than 30 items a year, or that turn over more than €2,000 (currently around £1,700), the chances of being caught out have increased. The 2023-2024 tax year ended on 5 April 2024, so make sure your records are up-to-date and that you’re declaring information if you need to.