how does ebay vat rest work?

[ebaywanton]

So, if i rest my account for a few months to avoid the VAT threshold, would the sales reset to zero in February (since i made the account Feb this year)??

Or, do the numbers just go down per month?

[SaiJin]

It should reset.

[Pandoras_box]

eBay calculates your VAT using history for the last 12 months of your sales activity. If you do not have 12 months, they will use whatever you have to project what you might take in.

You can check how much you've sold in retrospect here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sh/performance/sales

You can check how much you've sold the lifetime of your account (excluding pulled listings) here:

https://sellerstandards.ebay.co.uk/dashboard

The latter does not count towards your VAT if you've been spreading sales.

It is a good idea to slow sales down before you approach the threshold in any 12-month period. If you wait until you get the notice, then it would be futile to hibernate your account - as you would be unable to list items even if you wait 12 months and your sales reset to zero.
Your only recourse at that time would be to show correspondence from HMRC absolving you of any responsibility to register for VAT.