Great news. Ebay drops seller charges!
- Thread starter winjohn
- Start date
Online retailer eBay scraps fees for private sellers in UK
In latest response to rivals such as Depop and Vinted, users now only pay transaction fees on sales of vehicles
www.theguardian.com
sjcprojects
Orange 🍊 Fan
Business sellers still pay fees. Still a pretty big move, though.
They increasingly push promoting your listings for a fee, so I imagine that sort of thing is what they will be doing more.
They increasingly push promoting your listings for a fee, so I imagine that sort of thing is what they will be doing more.
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Food for thought #1: from Jan 2024 the new legislation requires all online marketplaces to report you to HMRC if you sold more than £1,000 worth of goods in a tax year. I suspect that HMRC will claim that you are trading if you exceed the £1,000 allowance and demand that you pay your current rate of tax on your ebay profits.
This is absolute bollocks, because the tax legislation outlines multiple tests to determine whether you're trading or not. But the way HMRC have operated in the last couple of decades is that they shoot first, ask questions later. That is, they accuse you of tax evasion first, and then it's up to you to prove you're innocent. That's a violation of one of the main principles of modern law system (innocent until proven guilty) but the taxman don't care. They've been doing that to IR35 contractors for years before some wise guy murdered contracting by just automatically making you guilty if you don't pay via PAYE.
Now all the money in the piggybank has been spent on sustaining wars all over the globe, so they are onto taxing folks selling their old trainers.
I don't see how this is possible, as determining whether you made a profit or not is hard for used stuff. You should also, in theory, be able to claim any losses against your main income tax liability, which is the reason why selling personal used goods is exempt from tax - taxman doesn't like to give money back to you.
Food for thought #2: In nearest future Ebay may decide you're a business seller if you gross over £1,000 a year on the back of thought #1.
Food for thought #3: So far it's only on for a month and you're limited to 300 listings (OK for most private sellers).
For the last 2 years they had a running offer of 80% (then 70%) off commission, so they were already running on lower fees. I've heard that folks move to other platforms because ebay commission was not competitive. Ebay has been carp since the start of the year. Very low buyer volumes. Might be the reason why.
Food for thought #4: I see ebay switching to a pay-to-promote Reverb model, where you can list for free and the commission is low, but they rig the search engine so that your ad does not come up in searches unless you voluntarily pay to promote (Different promotion level bands up to 30% of sale value, which is extortionate!).
Also, I believe there's a 3% commission for international sales (only UK-to-UK is free). I might be wrong.
This is absolute bollocks, because the tax legislation outlines multiple tests to determine whether you're trading or not. But the way HMRC have operated in the last couple of decades is that they shoot first, ask questions later. That is, they accuse you of tax evasion first, and then it's up to you to prove you're innocent. That's a violation of one of the main principles of modern law system (innocent until proven guilty) but the taxman don't care. They've been doing that to IR35 contractors for years before some wise guy murdered contracting by just automatically making you guilty if you don't pay via PAYE.
Now all the money in the piggybank has been spent on sustaining wars all over the globe, so they are onto taxing folks selling their old trainers.
I don't see how this is possible, as determining whether you made a profit or not is hard for used stuff. You should also, in theory, be able to claim any losses against your main income tax liability, which is the reason why selling personal used goods is exempt from tax - taxman doesn't like to give money back to you.
Food for thought #2: In nearest future Ebay may decide you're a business seller if you gross over £1,000 a year on the back of thought #1.
Food for thought #3: So far it's only on for a month and you're limited to 300 listings (OK for most private sellers).
For the last 2 years they had a running offer of 80% (then 70%) off commission, so they were already running on lower fees. I've heard that folks move to other platforms because ebay commission was not competitive. Ebay has been carp since the start of the year. Very low buyer volumes. Might be the reason why.
Food for thought #4: I see ebay switching to a pay-to-promote Reverb model, where you can list for free and the commission is low, but they rig the search engine so that your ad does not come up in searches unless you voluntarily pay to promote (Different promotion level bands up to 30% of sale value, which is extortionate!).
Also, I believe there's a 3% commission for international sales (only UK-to-UK is free). I might be wrong.
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sjcprojects
Orange 🍊 Fan
It's not quite that simple – you can sell over £1,000, it depends on what those goods are. But I agree it's made people more wary of selling on eBay if they are not business sellers.
I think your last point is about right, though. Increasingly search results will be based on paying to appear at the top of them, certainly in popular categories .
There's a whole list of tests, but the main one is whether the goods have originally been acquired with a view of re-selling at a profit.
My expectation is that everyone will get a scary letter accusing them of tax evasion. Some will just be scared into paying tax that they don't owe.
The last HMRC seminar I've been to outlined their main objective as "Maximising tax revenue".
It used to be "Ensuring a fair tax system".
