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HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

How are people managing the new disclosures required by eBay when selling over £1740.

Is everyone now just declaring and using real details? If not how are you getting around withdrawing to another account?

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

There's about 500 million threads about this on here.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

I couldn't find any that gave a clear answer. Happy to look again

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

just give ⊗⊗⊗⊗ details...chances are HMRC wont come back again if you are using ⊗⊗⊗⊗ details....use real details, theyll eventually come back ...

but with ⊗⊗⊗⊗, they may just contact ebay and let them know your details didnt match and youd be asked to provide again or potentially suspeneded.

Either ways, its not a biggie for stealthers

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

I don't think that's strictly true from what I've read. When HMRC realise the details don't match your real bank they'll investigate. They already have your details as you have to provide actual bank details from which they'll be able to get your real name (even if you give a ⊗⊗⊗⊗ one).

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

If that's allowed and say for example ebay doesn't suspend those accounts and they keep actively selling. That means ebay are hiding accounts from authorities and not disclosing them so they're in the same boat as the stealthers.

In the long run, everyone has to go legit, there are no 2 ways about it.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

This is some of the worst advice I've ever seen on here!

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

alright lets hear your smart idea around generating an NI no for a fictitious name?

some of you just criticize without anyform of input...ill give you a year to respond back with something of use

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

yes but this is on the presumption that your stealth account would live for a long time,the sooner people realise you only have a short while with your stealths...you'd treat them as such



All this selling at cute tiny prices, large quantites, browsing products to build cookies etc, the acc would still get suspended along the way, no matter what rules you follow. hmrc, mc099, whatever it is, your stealth is coming down eventually, so goodluck to people trying to set up actual businesses on stealth accounts.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

theres no long run in this game....everything stealth is short run...

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

I would first be dealing with the most urgent problems which are the risk of suspension

HMRC is a long term risk for some people that may or may not come to fruition but suspensions are real and they are a threat here and now

and I find it to be quite funny how some people here complain about how they got suspended and that they need new accounts and at the same time they put concerns about tax implications of those accounts first

it is the same as with a soldier on the frontline where bullets fly above his head and artillery shells explode around him and he is concerned whether he will have enough money to pay his bills

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

But it's not a long term risk. eBay now report transactions over £1740 to HMRC which means you'll be asked for a personal tax number etc etc. if you can provide that you'll be gone.

Suspension is relatively easy to navigate.

The issue is those who sell 10k + a year and now having to report is an issue

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

I honestly can not take anyone seriously who claims that suspensions are easy to navigate

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

suspension is not easy to navigate....the slightest thing can get you suspended...provide a random ni, as this is the only way around this and then HMRC may come back months down the line and youll get suspended.either ways, you ARE getting suspended permanently at some point

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

the small guys will not all be suspended , there are millions of sellers so small ones are not significant enough to be taken down

bigger sellers better watch out

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

whats your definition of small... if its 500 pounds a month guys...sure they can live as long as they like....their timeline will be determined by a drastic shift in selling patterns in the long run


i dont take ebay seriusly anymore

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

There is no long term workaround to the NI with stealth. If you have a bank account attached to your ebay account and HMRC want to find out who you are they easily can.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

Has anyone had this happen yet?

I have around £35k in annual sales and not had any notifications as of yet.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

with small I mean a few hundred to several thousand per month

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

EBay and HMRC are completely separate with this change, its a business interruption for ebay, they will provide HMRC with as little information as possible - account name/address and NI number for all account selling in excess of the £1700 limit- HMRC will then bang out a load of letters asking people to complete self assessment forms - scattergun approach.
Obviously a lot of these will be people selling own belongings and not eligible to pay tax, then those selling to make profit... its a numbers game and the end result will be A LOT of ebayers starting to pay tax.. if the name and address doesn't match the NI number then it will be a HMRC process on what they do - they can find you if flagged from your banking information

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

ebay will provide HMRC with exactly what they need to track down that person. i.e. if the NI number doesn't match, then even if it takes months for HMRC to get around to noticing, they will eventually and then that'll mean checking bank account details. This will note who the actual person is and there's no way of avoiding that.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

It only came into effect recently and ebay will report from 1 Jan 2025 (if you've made sales >1740 in 2024. So if you've made £35k last year then expect some form of request from ebay soon.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

I get this question a lot, and my answer is always the same…

Enter whatever details you prefer. While this may not be a permanent solution, it typically won’t cause any major issues for a while—if at all.

The reason?
The system isn’t fully automated. If it were, eBay would have integrated it with their API to instantly verify the details against account records, flagging discrepancies right away—but that doesn’t happen. Instead, verification only occurs after you reach a certain threshold. Because of this setup, the process is never automatic. In most cases, they likely don’t review these details until at least once per quarter, or even at the end of the tax year.

There are also alternative approaches, such as setting up a limited company.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

You might be right that it'll take a few weeks maybe even months to check the details but be assured that whilst eBay may not automate for it (why would they? There's no need for them except for providing a data dump to HMRC ) that HMRC will have the ability to check this and they definitely will flag it. How they will follow-up up on this is an easy matter as part of the data provided by eBay is your bank account details which, if real, will easily lead to a follwup. Especially if youre making thousands a year. They will cast their net wide in the hopes of catching something.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

Yes, but you’ll likely have several opportunities to correct any mistakes before it raises a red flag. People enter incorrect details all the time, and platforms understand that errors happen. They won’t immediately escalate the situation or trigger an HMRC investigation just because of a single mistake—that would be an overreach. At the very least, they are required to give you a chance to correct any inaccuracies before taking further measures.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

Agree but thats not my point. It means onces the limits have been breached and details shared, you really won't be able to hide anymore unless your bank details are not yours.

I.e. eBay will share all those details automatically with HMRC (name, add, NI, bank details). Lets say all of those details are stealth (except for bank for obvious reasons), you'll still be able to be identified. They might say, "please update your details" as they don't match any record and if you don't eBay might ban you BUT HMRC won't let it slide as they have your actual details (i.e. from your real bank) and if you're making thousands a year, you can bet that they'll come knocking asking for an explanation.

What I'm getting at is, yes, you can delay ebay and even HMRC doing anything for week or even months. But as soon as they have your info which is automatically shared by eBay once you breach £1740, then its inevitable that there'll be questions from HMRC.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

Yes, HMRC could reach out via the bank to gather information, but how likely is that? With so many platforms, stealth accounts, and sellers operating outside the UK, investigating each one individually would require enormous resources. If the amounts are relatively small (which they should be if you're spreading risk across multiple accounts), it's unlikely to be a priority—but of course, there are no guarantees.

This system is mainly a reporting tool to send data to HMRC. Given the sheer number of people selling thousands of pounds worth of personal items on platforms like eBay, it's unrealistic for them to investigate everyone. With hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of sellers across multiple platforms, HMRC simply doesn’t have the capacity to scrutinise every case.

If you want to maintain a solid account long-term, the best approach is to transition it into a limited company, registering it under a business you control with its own tax information.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

It's extremely likely, this is why the digital sales bill was specifically put in place. Yes there will be bigger fish but, it won't matter if you spread across multiple accounts if they're are all linked to 1 person. HMRC will definitely be going after these guys and I think you have a false sense of security that HMRC will ignore these people. I guess time will tell but I assure you that there is no extra work getting info from banks (which they are legally obliged to provide).

Yes potentially ltd company is the way to go but I can't be arsed with the hassle. But I assure you therell be more than a few people caught out this year.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

It seems like we're looking at this from two different angles. As previously mentioned, this situation can be managed, but if the goal is to reduce or conceal real earnings, that’s a completely different discussion and not one worth pursuing.

For anyone reading this and feeling concerned, it's still too early to say with certainty how things will unfold. However, at this point, the likelihood of it causing immediate issues for anyone’s account is low. As explained before, there are ways to address this if needed, so I wouldn’t be too worried just yet.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

If my eBay Stealth account points to my real bank account, and HMRC can see the name on my bank account, wouldn't getting a Stealth bank account resolve this issue?

Do people on here still sell bank accounts?

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

Please tell me this is a joke?

Seriously WTF!

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

I've noticed some confusion over this issue in this thread and hope I can help people by explaining my view.


First, the facts:

If you opened an eBay account on eBay UK in 2024 and made over 30 sales OR over £1,740 in sales, they would have asked you for your NI number.

If they did, you should have received an email entitled "Your 2024 Digital Sales Report" on approximately 31/Jan/25 informing you they've submitted your 2024 sales to HMRC.

Accounts opened before 2024 which hit these thresholds in 2025 will be required to supply an NI number, and their sales for 2025 will be reported in Jan 2026.


Secondly - My view:

There is no way for eBay to verify an NI number. There is no checksum and they have no access to HMRC systems. If you make a typo, it will still go through (as long as it's in the right format).

As long as you declare the money going into your account as self-employment on your self assessment, HMRC do not care if it came from a stealth eBay account or that you made a typo entering your NI number.

This is a long-term consideration - Self assessments are made in arrears. You have until 31 Jan 2026 to declare any income made on eBay in May 2024, for example.

The only risk to your stealth account is if HMRC tells eBay you have made a typo when you submitted your NI number. As the legislation is purely about e-commerce reporting, I don't believe this is likely in the short term.

Of course, HMRC can look at the bank account payments are going into, but as long as you are paying tax on that income, I can't see you have anything to worry about.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of HMRC looking at bank accounts - if they want to look at your bank accounts without your consent, they have to issue a "Financial Institution Notice" (FIN). Between 1st April 2023 and 31st of March 2024, HMRC issued just 914 of these for domestic bank accounts. It seems unlikely they will be issuing one for every eBay account where someone has made a typo.

In the next 1-2 years, HMRC will likely use the reported data to write to taxpayers who aren't completing a self assessment, reminding them that they should do so, again if you are already declaring the income you have nothing to worry about .

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

HMRC have had power to look into banks for many years. the only different thing right now will be that bigger sellers will be presented to them on a golden plate , especially sellers liable for VAT and not having VAT registration

if they need the small guy selling some cheap crap? I doubt

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

First rule of business, don't **** with the VAT man.

I believe eBay already suspend your account if you hit 90k sales in 12 months until you give them a valid VAT number (which they can verify online)

Honest sellers completing a self assessment are already asked on the form if their turnover was over 90k,

You're right though, if a sellers' turnover over several stealth accounts is more than 90k and they're not VAT registered they're in trouble, and the VAT man moves a lot faster than the self-assessment guys.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

ebay automatically restrict all people who are registered in the UK without VAT number on file if they come close to the threshold which is not 90K for sure , it happens earlier

and any people registered abroad without UK VAT number who state UK as item location , here restriction comes within 24-48 hours of first sale

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

If I'm running several accounts, all 100% Stealth, how would the VAT man find out?

I have 4 accounts that made around £30k each in 2024. At a glance none of the accounts are liable for VAT individually.

So id have to be one of the very few that HMRC would "audit" for them to find out. I don't really know too much about tax, but my liabilities would be around 20%-25%? I'm hoping they'd think £6k wasn't worth the effort.

Am I being naive?

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

there are really enough people to check , it is not only ebay. I appreciate everyone think about themselves they are special but I doubt they all are in the real world

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

The HMRC VAT threshold is 90k, over a rolling 12 month period, from 1st April 2024, previously it was 85k, your're correct that leeway this only applies to UK residents.

eBay may have lower thresholds, i've always kept my accounts below 70k to be safe and have never been asked for a VAT number.

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

If they look into it, you are guilty of Tax and Vat evasion. It would be a lot more then £6k. Don't drop the soap!

Re: HMRC effects £1740 limit
 

No one is authorized to sell bank accounts on this forum - elsewhere, there do exist sellers but it's always a potential fraudulent issue.