Vinted - have you informed HMRC about sales, or earnings. Im under the threshold but been told to report 🤷‍♀️

[CornishTeaTime]

Vinted has advised to report/complete a form Ive made £600 since starting with them over 65 sales.

I work part time and also do self employed work one day a week which Im registered for...do I need to declare vi ted earnings on my tax assessement in April 🤷‍♀️

Anyone done this?

I think Vinted is having a mad moment. I’ve sold about 40 items and it claims that I have sold 145 and have 145 sets of feedback.

HMRC have started looking at things like Vinted and EBay, but I don’t know the thresholds. .

I know some of my clients on UC have been called for a review due to selling stuff on Vinted/ebay, even though it's their old clothes and clearly not business. Someone was telling me that she'd sold 40 items of baby clothes over 6 months for about £1 per piece, and UC have said it needs to go to a decision maker to ascertain if she's a business and needs to register as self-employed.

So have they asked you like me to complete form as you have had 30+ sales? @125High

My niece who is a single parent, is on UC and sells on her kids clothes on vinted or locally to put food in their mouths or to reclothe her kids

I see things haven't changed since my wife worked for the Civil Service. The quality of decision making at the lower levels is often appalling. There is no way someone making around £100 of sales a year on second-hand clothing is running a business or needs to register as self-employed.

The tax man cometh for you

They don't, this regulation is the cost effective aH of catching the "side hustle" crowd.

As others have said, although the ability to share information has changed between vinted and HMRC, the fundamental rules of declaring income haven’t changed – this comes under ‘badges of trade’. There needs to be an actual intent to make a profit and if you are just selling a few items, like unwanted clothing, this isn’t trading and isn’t therefore taxable.

The issue I'm concerned about with this is that I've often sold stuff on eBay and ended up making more than I expected - for example, I love bags and at one point had over a hundred, nearly all bought from eBay or charity shops. I had a declutter and sold them over several months to avoid taking 50 bags to the post office at once. Most of them sold for around £20 but some went bonkers on auction and went for close to £100. So technically I made a profit on these, despite not being a trader. And definitely a couple of years, along with other stuff I sold (musical instruments mainly - I've sold a few guitars I no longer used), my income/sales numbers have been over the threshold. This is going back a few years though, pre-pandemic.

Are they likely to get in touch with me, do you think? The fact that I sold five or six bags a month might make it look like 'trade' but it absolutely wasn't, even though I've no way of proving that. It's actually kept me awake worrying!

@WhatTheFuckIsThisNow Nobody can dictate what you spend your personal money on. Even HMRC understand the concept of personal choice. What matters is whether or not, when you acquired each bag, you have 'personal use and enjoyment' in mind or whether there co-existed an element of speculation that you might one day resell and make a profit. There is not enough information in your post to determine that, but I would say you are low risk on the handbags. What are we talking about anyway - £4,000 or £5,000 - spread over a number of years and then you have expenses or the £1,000 trading allowance to deduct? Worse case sounds like your total tax might only be in the low hundreds of pounds and probably nothing at all. I think you need to sleep easy.

As to the guitars, it sounds as if you bought these for personal use and enjoyment. that being the case their sale would not bring you within the trading income rules. But anything that is 'tangible moveable property' is a chattel. Profits on chattels sold for more than £6,000 are liable to CGT with some reliefs to reduce the tax bill until the value reaches £15,000. Depending on the make/ model, they may classify as 'wasting chattels' - ie on manufacture they were expected to have a useful life of less than 50 years. In those cases the sale is exempt from CGT. An example of a wasting chattel is a boat. An example of a non-wasting chattel is a necklace.

@WhatTheFuckIsThisNow good question.
I sold unwanted gifts in the past, so zero purchase price for me. Does that mean I made 100% profit? This looks s a bit of a minefield.

An unwanted gift is not acquired in the 'adventure of a trade'. There is no motive to resell on acquisition. It is also very unlikely you amassed 100s of gifts then decided to trade in them.

You only need to consider if you come into the CGT rules on gifts sold for £6,000 or more if they are chattels.

Thank you @Fuckle
That makes sense how you explained everything.

I thought the £6000 limit for CGT on chattels referred to each item

I sold my late brothers hobby collection and I contacted the HMRC to ask if CGT was owed as the total was over £6000 and I was told on the phone that only tax was due on those particular items if they had sold individually for more than £6000 (none did).

Yes it is on each item, unless several items make a set (eg four dining room chairs) in which case you view the set as a whole. Whether items make a set can be subjective - does a mixture of eight Penny Black and Penny Red stamps from 1840's comprise a set? It may depend on how they were acquired and the market for investing in them collectively or individually.

An inherited household of antiques for example would not be classed as a set per se as there is unlikely to be any context for that.

Yes, the chap on the phone asked if they were a set - not.

Not a set I meant to say - can’t edit the post

If you are buying for resale then it's earnings. If not then it isn't

I watch a few of the luxury handbag tiktoks where people are on the Hermes list for years, pay £20k for a handbag and then go to a luxury reseller and sell it for £40k so they should be paying CGT as they bought it to sell and they made over £6k same with cars paintings etc I guess.

The jacket I paid £3 for in the charity shop and sold for £25 on eBay is exempt? Even tho that was my intention?

If you buy items with the intention of selling them that is trading so the capital gains exemptions wouldn't apply

This is really helpful, thank you.

I didn't buy bags with the intention of selling as such, but I definitely have bought things thinking well, if I don't get on with them, I can sell them at some point. Sometimes I made more than I originally paid - for example, I once bought a bag in a charity shop for £4.99, used it for a night out then it sat in my wardrobe for a few months before I got around to selling it. It was a designer I'd never heard of and the auction went nuts, eventually ending at almost £200. It wasn't my intention to sell at a massive profit - that's just what it went for. I'd say similar has happened a few times but usually I'd make no 'profit' or just a few pounds. Point is, how can HMRC know if I'm being honest? They might look at the fact I sold many bags over an extended period and think I was trading - how can I possibly prove I wasn't?

The guitars weren't terribly expensive, just a few hundred pounds each and definitely less than I paid for them. I still have all my receipts for them - they were all bought new - and it's pretty clear that they were used for many years before they were sold. I'm not too concerned about them, only inasmuch that they will bump up my selling allowance every year and attract attention to the stuff I can't prove so easily wasn't trading.

This all goes back years anyway - I'd cleared my cupboards and stopped buying so much junk stuff by about 2020 and haven't sold much since, all of which is easily proved to be personal stuff sold not for a profit (bits of jewellery, a couple of kindles). How far back will they be looking? Are they reviewing everyone's accounts for the whole lives of their accounts, or just the previous financial year?

Can you make it simple for me, I work in tax but not income tax. I buy a jacket in the charity shop, let's say it's Armani. It's £5 I put it on eBay and I get £50, I need to report this to HMRC and pay CGT on this? Income tax as well? ( I am registered self employed but as a a different trade, not retail sales)

Not CGT but if you are buying solely with the intent of selling for profit you're trading.

It does. And my concern is they'll go after people like us who are not traders but have made a bit of money on stuff we own, whether it's acquired cheaply and used for a bit/not suitable or gifted. And how on earth can we prove we're not trading, just selling our stuff?

My listings always look quite professional - I studied photography and I'm a writer so I actually enjoy listing stuff. eBay has tips for increasing your sales, aimed at private sellers - these include taking clear, professional photos and writing detailed descriptions, all of which I do. Yet one of HMRC's badges of trade is professional looking listings. Mine would definitely fall under that.

It's a bit like eBay are setting you up to get into bother!