Do you pay tax on Vinted and eBay sales? The UK rules, simply

There was a lot of panic about “Vinted tax” when platforms started reporting to HMRC. Most of it was overblown, and a lot of what was written at the time was wrong.

Here’s the calm, accurate version.

Checked against GOV.UK on 20 July 2026. Figures are for the 2026/27 tax year; sources at the end.

The short answer

If you’re selling things from your own wardrobe or loft that you originally bought to use, you almost certainly owe nothing and need to do nothing.

If you’re buying things in order to sell them at a profit, that’s trading, and you may need to register once your income from it passes £1,000 in a tax year.

Everything else is detail on those two sentences.

The key question: are you clearing out, or trading?

It comes down to why you acquired the thing.

Selling your own used possessions (clothes you no longer wear, an old console, furniture from a house move) is generally not taxable. GOV.UK puts it plainly: you’re unlikely to pay tax if you’re selling personal items from your home, like the contents of a loft or garage.

It doesn’t matter how much it adds up to. Someone clearing a wardrobe of £4,000 of designer clothes they bought to wear and now don’t isn’t trading, and isn’t taxed on it, even though the number looks large.

Buying things in order to sell them on at a profit (sourcing stock, flipping, thrifting to resell) is trading. That income is potentially taxable, and the £1,000 threshold applies.

How HMRC actually decides: the badges of trade

Where it’s genuinely unclear, HMRC doesn’t apply one test. It looks at a set of indicators, long established, usually called the badges of trade. The useful ones for a marketplace seller:

Why did you acquire it? Bought to use, then sold when you were done, points away from trading. Bought specifically to sell points firmly towards it.
How often? One clearout is not a pattern. Regular, repeated transactions are.
Did you change it to make it more sellable? Repairing, restoring, cleaning up or reworking items before listing looks like trading.
How did you get it? Inherited or gifted items point away. Sourced from car boots, wholesalers or clearance points towards.
How quickly did you sell? Long ownership then a sale looks personal. Buy Tuesday, list Wednesday looks commercial.
Was there a profit motive at the time you bought it? This is the one that matters most.

Almost nobody is genuinely ambiguous once they answer the first question honestly. If you bought it to wear and later sold it, you’re decluttering. If you bought it to flip, you’re trading, and telling yourself otherwise doesn’t change the answer.

The £1,000 trading allowance

If you’re trading, you get a £1,000 trading allowance each tax year. Earn under £1,000 from trading and you generally don’t need to register or declare it.

Go over and you need to register for Self Assessment and declare the income.

Two things people get wrong about that £1,000:

It’s gross income, not profit. If you sold £3,000 of items that cost you £2,400, your profit was £600, but your income was £3,000, so you’re over and you need to register. The allowance is measured before expenses.

It’s per tax year, 6 April to 5 April, not per calendar year and not per platform. £600 on Vinted plus £700 on eBay is £1,300 of trading income, and it’s over.

You’ll also see talk of the threshold rising to £3,000. That change is not in force. The £1,000 figure is what applies today. If it changes, GOV.UK will say so before anyone else does.

Income versus profit

If you are over the threshold, you’re taxed on profit, not on what landed in your account.

Say you sold £4,000 of stock over the year:


Sales	£4,000
Cost of the stock	−£1,800
Platform and payment fees	−£320
Postage you paid	−£450
Packaging, mileage to the post office, listing costs	−£180
Taxable profit	£1,250

You declare the £4,000 and claim £2,750 of costs. You’re taxed on £1,250, and at the basic rate that’s 20% Income Tax plus 6% Class 4 National Insurance, so roughly £325.

Which is why tracking costs matters as much as tracking sales. Every fee, postage label and packing cost you don’t record is profit you get taxed on but never had.

What the platform reporting actually means

Platforms including Vinted, eBay, Etsy and Depop now share seller data with HMRC.

This did not change the tax rules. It changed what HMRC can see. If you’re a genuine declutterer, nothing about your position changed. If you were trading above the threshold and not declaring it, that’s the gap it closes.

A platform doesn’t report you if you make fewer than 30 sales of goods in a calendar year and receive less than €2,000 (roughly £1,700) for them.

Two things worth being clear about, because this is where most of the confusion came from:

Those thresholds are reporting thresholds, not tax thresholds. They’re the point at which the platform tells HMRC about you. They have nothing to do with whether you owe tax. You can be reported and owe nothing, which is the position most people who cross 30 sales are in.

Being reported is not an accusation. It’s a data feed. If you were clearing out your loft, the data shows someone who cleared out their loft.

The genuinely useful consequence: if you are trading, assume HMRC can see the numbers, because it can.

So what should you actually do?

If you’re clearing out your own things: nothing. Keep selling. You don’t need to register, declare, or worry about the 30-sale figure.

If you’re buying to resell:

Track from the first item, not from the moment you cross the threshold. You can’t reconstruct what you paid for stock six months later, and unclaimed costs are tax you didn’t need to pay.
Watch your running total of trading income against £1,000, across all platforms combined.
Register by 5 October following the end of the tax year you crossed in.
Set aside 25 to 30% of profit as you go.
Keep the evidence (receipts for stock, fee statements, postage costs) for at least five years after the January filing deadline.

If you’re not sure which you are: answer the “why did I buy it?” question honestly. That resolves the vast majority of cases. If it genuinely doesn’t, an accountant will settle it in one conversation for less than the cost of getting it wrong.

What about Capital Gains Tax?

Mostly a non-issue for marketplace selling, but worth knowing the shape of it.

Selling your own personal possessions is generally outside Capital Gains Tax, with an exception for individual high-value items. If you’re selling a single item worth thousands, say a piece of jewellery, an antique or a collectable, that’s worth checking properly rather than assuming.

And note that trading and capital gains are different things. Trading profit is income, not a capital gain. Which of the two you’re doing decides everything else, which is why the first question in this article is the first question.

The practical takeaway for resellers

If you’re reselling as a business, you need to know your profit: sale price minus what you paid minus fees minus postage. That’s what you’re taxed on, and it’s also what tells you whether an item was worth listing at all.

Most resellers know their sales figure and guess at everything else. The guess is almost always optimistic, because fees and postage are easy to forget and add up to a surprising share of a low-value sale.

That’s the core of the Reselling app in Sedonis: real profit per item after fees, across Vinted, eBay and Depop, kept private and ready at tax time. Free to start.

Next steps

Reselling profit calculator · what an item really made after fees
Side hustle tax in the UK · the wider picture
Vinted fees explained and eBay fees UK
Stop using a reselling spreadsheet

Checked against GOV.UK on 20 July 2026: selling goods or services on a digital platform, tax-free allowances on property and trading income, Income Tax rates, self-employed National Insurance. Thresholds change. Check the source before relying on a figure.

General information, not tax advice. Whether you’re trading depends on your circumstances, and the badges of trade are indicators rather than a checklist. Check GOV.UK or an accountant if your case isn’t clear-cut.