can you sell on ebay while on benefits?

[candyfluff]

thats it really

How would they know?

iirc you are 'allowed' an extra £20 per week before you have to declare it.

Technically if it's a big, one off sale you need to declare and you will lose the appropriate amount of benefit that week. But I wouldn't bother. They take ages to sort anything like that out and if it's a one it's unlikely to take you over the £20 p/w if you divided it up over the year.

If it's a regular thing and for over £20 p/w then you need to declare it and they will advise you on TC and small business' which is what you would be.

depends if you make a profit or not and how much

really more than £20 - wow thats such a small about to declare it
so if you are just selling stuff that belongs to you that you no longer want you cant sell it ??? - thats mad
but i could sell at a carboot and they would never know

but it's £20 profit - you have to sell for more than you bought it for to start with

I'm no expert but have heard if its personal possessions you no longer need you are fine.
Its when you start buying stuff with the intention of selling on that things get dodgy. How anyone could prove either way is beyond me though.

I think it goes off profit. I'm not on benefits as such, but I am planning on declaring to tax credits once I make an overall profit- my rough way of working this out is my "bought" and "sold" totals on ebay. I buy some things in RL, but some of the stuff I buy on ebay is eg clothes for the DCs so I think it evens out. Once my "sold" is more than my "bought" I will declare it to TC, before then I am keeping careful records. I hope this is right.

They can be really petty - my DP won £1,000 on a tv gameshow when on JSA and just lost the same amount in benefits so didn't actually end up with any extra money at all. I suppose you can see why they do it, but he was annoyed!

Yep, if they are your own personal possessions there are no tax implications - even if they were worth thousands such as a unique record/stamp collection.

it works basically the same as it does for tax purposes.
If you are selling your own unwanted items then this doesn't affect your benefits, nor do you have to declare to the tax man.
If you are buying to sell or making to sell then it is classed as a business and you need to pay tax and inform the social. The same would apply if you were to buy to sell or make to sell for regular car-boots.
If you intend to start a small business selling on ebay you can inform them and they will probably advise you to start up and see how it goes. Any money made must be declared to them and they will deduct the appropriate amount from your benefits (allowing you to keep the 1st £20) Once you start being succesfull and approach earnings of £90+ a week you can start up as self employed, come off benefits and receive tax credits the same as if you were working for someone else.

Of course you can. Surely it's the same as doing a car boot sale?

maybe i shall just do a few things a week then ???- whern you fill in the benefit forms they dont ask you anything like that

course you can!!!

so its quite divided then - who is right ???

I think what pinkmagic said is correct. If youre buying in to sell then you are in effect a business and should be declared.

sorry - Im a bit slow and didnt read thread. Six lost monkeys explains it very well.

You are allowed to sell your own belongings, because you;re not techically making a 'profit', you are depriving yourself of items for money. Even if said items go for perhaps more than you paid for them 5 years ago or whatever.
It would only become of interest to anyone in authority if you were either making/producing the items or buying lots of stuff purely to sell it on at a profit.