HMRC reselling advice
Hi everyone, hoping for some genuine advice because I’m feeling pretty anxious about this.
Before anyone says it — I completely understand people may think I deserve this situation, and I know I should’ve dealt with it sooner. I’m not trying to avoid responsibility, I’m genuinely just looking for advice or experiences from people who may have been in a similar position.
I’ve been selling on eBay for around 10 years. I originally started as a student trying to make extra money to survive university. From early on it was a mix of selling personal items and buying things specifically to resell for profit.
A lot of it was honestly trial and error — buying things that barely sold, selling at losses, learning as I went, clearing out things from my house and my mum’s house, and at one point helping my uncle clear belongings after his wife passed away. I still have loads of stuff in my loft now that I bought thinking it would sell and it never did.
Over the years it’s been a mixture of:
• personal belongings,
• family/household clear-outs,
• and items bought intentionally to resell.
I also had a part-time job years ago where we occasionally got free stock, so I sold some of that too.
My profits were always inconsistent. Sometimes I lost money, sometimes I made £1, and occasionally maybe up to £50 profit on an item, but more commonly around £10. I appreciate profit margins don’t necessarily matter from HMRC’s perspective, but because the amounts felt small and inconsistent, I stupidly assumed HMRC probably wouldn’t care.
Taxes honestly overwhelmed me and I kept putting it off. The longer I ignored it, the harder it felt to deal with.
How serious I was with reselling depended on what was going on in my life. For example, when I lost my job for a couple of months, I relied on it more heavily. Now I mostly do it casually on weekends alongside my job because of the cost of living.
Now that I’m trying to take it more seriously and do things properly, I’m worried about what to do regarding the last 10 years and how HMRC would react.
Part of the stress is I don’t even know how I’d fully reconstruct everything. My mum posted some parcels for me, so not all postage costs are on my accounts. The bank account I used at university was closed years ago, and I don’t have receipts for loads of older items. It just feels like a huge mess that I want to sort out and get off my plate. I’m willing to pay whatever I genuinely owe — I just don’t know how HMRC usually handles situations where records are incomplete.
Has anyone dealt with something similar or voluntarily come forward after years of selling online?