Accountants for Vinted, eBay and Depop sellers

Vinted tax UK confusion almost always comes down to mixing up two separate things: whether a platform reports your account to HMRC, and whether your income is actually taxable. They are related but not the same, and understanding the difference is the whole answer to most "does eBay report to HMRC" or "does Vinted report to HMRC" questions.

Since 1 January 2024, digital platform reporting rules require marketplaces like Vinted, eBay, Depop, Etsy and Airbnb to collect information about sellers and report it to HMRC each year, with the first reports sent in January 2025. A small-seller exemption means platforms generally do not need to report sellers with fewer than around 30 sales and roughly £1,700 of income in a year. This is the source of the "HMRC 30 sales rule" people search for — it is a reporting threshold aimed at platforms, not a tax-free allowance aimed at sellers.

Separately, ordinary tax rules decide whether your reselling income is taxable at all. Selling your own possessions — clothes you wore, furniture you owned, a phone you upgraded from — is not trading, however frequently you do it or however much it adds up to, because you are disposing of things you already owned for personal use rather than running a business. This applies whether you are on Vinted, eBay, Depop or Facebook Marketplace; the platform is irrelevant to this test.

Selling shifts into trading once you buy or source items specifically to resell for a profit, or run the activity with the pattern and organisation of a business: regular new stock, consistent listing volume, branding, or treating the income as a real part of your finances rather than a one-off clearout. HMRC and the courts use a set of "badges of trade" to weigh this up, covering things like frequency of transactions, whether items were improved before sale, how the sale was organised, and the seller's stated intention.

Once you are trading, the normal rules for a UK sole trader apply. The £1,000 trading allowance covers small resale activity without needing to register. Above that, gross trading income needs declaring through Self Assessment, with tax due on profit after deducting either the allowance or your real costs — stock, postage, platform and payment fees, packaging — whichever is higher.

This is exactly the same territory covered by side hustle tax: reselling is one of the most common side hustles we see, and the trading allowance, registration deadlines and record-keeping expectations are identical whether the trade is resale, content or freelancing.

A separate and often overlooked rule is Capital Gains Tax on chattels. If you sell a personal possession — not stock, a genuine personal item like jewellery, art or a collectable — for more than the chattels exemption limit, and it has gone up in value since you acquired it, CGT can apply even though this has nothing to do with trading. This mostly affects people selling valuable individual items rather than everyday clothing, but it catches sellers who assume "selling my own stuff" is always risk-free.

Practically, the sensible approach for anyone selling regularly on Vinted, eBay or Depop is to keep basic records from the start: what you paid for stock (if any), what you sold items for, platform and postage fees, and roughly how many transactions you have done in the tax year. That record answers both the trading question and the reporting question if HMRC or a platform ever asks.

If you already have an HMRC letter referencing your online selling, the worst response is to ignore it or panic. Most are prompts to review your position rather than accusations, and getting advice before replying — and disclosing anything genuinely owed voluntarily — is treated far better than waiting to be chased further.

Source: Income Tax rates and allowances (gov.uk) · Self Assessment (gov.uk)