Do any of you sell on ebay and keep records, pay tax etc?

[charliecat]

Cant seem to get my head round the accounting side of it at all....its ok selling but jeeesus keeping records...
How do you incorporate the charge of bubble wrap etc into it?

Don't know about ebay - but for an actual business you would keep a record of all income (incl postage) plus a record of all expenses (bubblewrap, cost of purchases, postage etc)

Then your profit is the first take away the second

hth

Thanks you Katymac, I get the gist of that, but would it be on a per item basic or how do you work out how much your 1 strip of brown paper cost if your using a roll....IYKWIM

don't pay tax as we're selling our own stuff.

keep accounts of all buyers though in files

No just keep a record of everything you spend on business related item. You don't have to work out what you spend on individual items. Is this a business or just a hobby?

Has been a hobby, with the occasional mad flurry of buying to sell, and I was umming and ahhing over getting a job...then came home one night and had sold a load of stuff while I was out flying a kite and realised it would be more profitable to do the ebay thing than work for pennys an hour.
Ive never made a loss on anything, never had a dead item sitting here and would like to do it all legally.

Just curious, what kind of stuff do you sell charliecat?

If you are buying stuff just to sell on ebay, then you don't have to try and record the profit on each item (though you might find this helpful for your own purposes). You can simply add up all your income and deduct all your expenses, though strictly when it comes to the end of the year you should add up the value of everything that you have unsold at that point in time (which would be treated as "stock" or work in progress).

So you might have
Annual sales (inc p&p) £10,000
Cost or items to you £4,000
Cost of all packaging in the year £100
Cost of postage in year £500

When it some to your year end you would look at what you had left over unsold - say £300 of items purchased and £10 of packaging material. THere amounts would have been included in the £4,000 and £100 above so you have to adjsut for them.

Your taxable profit would be £10,000 - £4,000 - £100 - £500 + £300 + £10.

I'm assuming that you are happy that you are actually trading and therefore have to pay tax.

anything and everything really, books, clothes, tescos ladybirds bags recently, one of those anya bags, a 5metre kite, a front room full of wallace and gromit cups last year...

Now that sounds nice and simple ladymuck
Ive been unable to sleep trying to work out how you would account for seperate sheets of brown paper LOL........

yep.. Thank You, going to ring the IR after the bank holiday, anything else I need to know, whats this about year ends ble de bla?
I have emailed the IR about a selfemployment course but they havent got back to me yet BTW.

It's easier if you use end of march as your year end - then it's very easy

Dont understand that KM, what do you mean...pretend im an idiot Actually I am lol

also include petrol, printer/ink, PC, a certain amount of electricity (I'm still trying to get details of this bit myself)

What are you setting up SLM? I read elsewhere you could claim a maximum of £2 per week for utility bills without it being queried, but anything over and above wqould need to be justified.

Your Tax allowance runs from Begining of April to the begining of April

I tend to use 1st April to 31st March and say I use 5th (or is it 6th) April to 4th (or is it 5th) April as it's easier

If you run with the tax year then all your deadlines are the same as the ones advertised on telly

eg tax return in by 30th September etc

If you earn (turnover) under £15K you do a small tax return with much less details - & it' smuch easier

Katymac where can i get an ogle at the form i will need to return so i now what im dealing with?

On-line HMRC.gov.uk

Look at self assessment form

here?

thanks, looking now

Read so much my heads spinning round and round....
Hope an ebay seller comes along soon...
If I sell something for £5 and ive charged postage and packing of £1.50 but the actual postage cost is 74p How does that work...?
incomings £6.50 outgoings 74p and there would be a lump cost of say £30 for a loads of packaging materials in the outgoings?

OK

You sell
57 itmes with a total cost of £945.03 (price plus P&P cost - the actual money that went into your account)

You bought said items for £524.97
You spent £97.50 on packaging material over the year
You spent £134.32 on postage over the year

Turnover = £945.03

Expenses = £524.97+£97.50+£134.32=£756.79

Profit (this is the bit you pay tax on) = £945.03 - £756.79 = £188.24

But you have to make about £5000 before you pay tax

Does that help?

Yes very much so. Thank you Katymac

It's much easier over a year than for each item (well I think anyway)

Yes can see that But how do they know your not talking out of your backside if you dont keep details of everything?
I could tell them I sold 1 and really sold 10 if thats the case?
I have just rang them and they are sending out the forms and until ive made my first sale I cant register.. Ok...ebay here we come
I can download all my sales from ebay onto disk. Possibly paypals too, or print them.
All excited