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eBay in the tax spotlight

May 4, 2023

business

 

The lovely people at the HRMC are turning their eye towards the internet to find to try and catch a lot of people who have been avoiding declaring their income.

According to the Guardian somewhere around 32,000 people have been trading on the site without declaring their earnings.

Image by: liewcf

How has this been allowed to happen I hear you cry, well there is a line between people selling the occasional thing on ebay and those that use the site to trade fully and buying items to sell them on at a profit is also considered trading. On the whole e-merchants are very good at paying what they owe and it is a small minority that need to come forward and sort out their affairs.

The letters were expected to be arriving with traders from the 2nd of May and they would be given until the 14th of June to come forward. If they do not come forward before that time then they will be fined between 40% - 100% of the tax owed instead of 10% - 20% if they come forward now. There may also be jail sentences if people ignore the fines.

How is it possible to monitor between people who are selling now and again on ebay and those that are trading? Obviously there is a huge difference between a few things being sold and a couple of hundred but there are some real ebay addicts out there who may not know that they could be considered traders.

And what if people have numerous accounts and appear to be doing a lot less selling than they actually are? Is there a way to stop them? It is good that tax dodgers are getting called out but there has to be a clear idea of who they are after.

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