Is SellMyRetro going to have to report sales figures to the HMRC?

[Lardo Boffin]

Given that eBay is going to start telling the delightful people at the revenue about people who sell stuff on ebay (more than 30 sales per year or about £1700 per year I believe) I was wondering if Sell My Retro is going to have to do the same?

[RWAP]

It all depends on whether we are classed as a marketplace and I walk a fine line that SellMyRetro is not necessarily a marketplace, but just an advertisement base - the main test is whether we control shipping and payment. We do neither - payments are made direct to the sellers and they have to sort out the shipping via a third party. However, "the average man on the clapham omnibus" (a classic test in UK law) would look at the site and say it is a marketplace, similar to ebay and etsy

There is currently no obvious mechanism for how the reporting has to be done and so I have no idea how we would even report these for UK sellers - let alone EU sellers!

[Lardo Boffin]

Thanks for the reply. I must admit I would have thought it was a marketplace - I didn’t consider the definitions! Off to clapham…

I suspect HMRC will eventually get info from all places regardless of such status. With the availability of data taxes can be collected.

[RWAP]

True but HMRC do not consult with SMEs and there is no information about how you are supposed to report figures. I read that they want you to collect full names and bank account numbers that payments go into. As I don't process the payments the best I could do is offer a PayPal account id.

[Lardo Boffin]

I suspect it won’t be long before they look at Paypal friends and family payments as well as those made with PayPal protection.

[1024MAK]

Hmm, would it encourage people to have multiple eBay and PayPal accounts (I have more than one PayPal account for example).

Mark

[Lardo Boffin]

I suspect it will encourage this but anyone doing that (and selling via PayPal a lot) will almost certainly be considered to be avoiding tax.


This from a newspaper:

https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2024/ ... w-about-it

There is mention of collecting NI numbers.