UK PowerSellers must register as businesses by 20th July
3/07/2008 at 18:06
Back in January, eBay announced that it would become compulsory for PowerSellers to be registered as businesses on the site. Pink Olly has now posted on the PowerSeller Board that as of 20th July, anyone who is not registered as a business seller will lose their PS status.
Olly has also reiterated what eBay told me a month or so ago, that there is a level at which sellers are required to register as businesses, or they are prevented from selling on the site. For those unsure why they need to register, representing yourself as a private seller when you are in fact a trader is a breach of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, and can lead to criminal prosecution.
Anyone who needs to change to business seller status should go to My eBay > My Account > Personal Information, and change their account type to “business”.
Updated to add: as noted on the Business Selling Board, “business seller not displaying proper information” has now been added to the “report this item” form.
Josordoni says
6:52 pm on 03/07/2008
ooooohhh that will sort the wheat from the chaff
northumbrian says
7:18 pm on 03/07/2008
yeah right
and your supposed to have an address visible .
and not have a web link
and not surcharge
,and not multi choice ,
blah blah blah
Sue Bailey says
7:21 pm on 03/07/2008
No, choice listings are gonna be allowed North :-p
http://www.tamebay.com/2008/06/choice-listings-anonymous-email-but-definitely-not-paypal-only-on-ebaycom.html
whirly says
7:26 pm on 03/07/2008
#1 what if you opt out of the powerseller program ? we all no how vigoursly eBay police there own site…..
Sue Bailey says
7:28 pm on 03/07/2008
If you opt out of the PS program, you will still hit the GMV ceiling where you’ve sold so much you’re forced to register as a business or stop selling. And opting out of the PS program doesn’t of course mean that HMRC won’t catch you.
whirly says
7:37 pm on 03/07/2008
#5 thats a fair enough, so why did the announcement just mention Powersellers, why not mention everyone?
Sue Bailey says
7:39 pm on 03/07/2008
Whirly, you might want to ask eBay that – but for what my guess is worth : they have to start somewhere. You start with the obvious targets, and you give people an incentive to do the right thing. “register as a business or you don’t get your FVF discounts” sounds pretty powerful to me. Once you’ve sorted the people with £100k turnover still calling themselves private sellers, then you can start looking at the people with £10k turnovers and make a judgement call on them.
whirly says
7:46 pm on 03/07/2008
I just asked …..
Thank you for calling eBay, we understand your frustrations that the feedback you recieved is unjustified, however we cannot get involved with buyer/seller disputes….yada yada yada
Hang on I was asking about today’s…………O never mind lol
To be fair “register as a business or you don’t get your FVF discounts†you would make more money dodging the tax, not sure about french tax allowances but we are getting murdered over here
For the record I am not having a eBay bashing day, I just get frustrated when I have to listen to corporate cobblers (thanks Norf)
northumbrian says
8:32 pm on 03/07/2008
yeah FVF discounts are quite nice and free money to us because we would use ebay even if we did not get a discount,
but they dont come close to our tax and vat bill
tbt says
9:54 am on 04/07/2008
Have no problem with the requirement to register as a business, it’s pretty clear lots of Traders have in the past failed to do this. Don’t think this will have any impact on HMRC identifying tax dodgers – have no doubt ebay will be handing off data to them regardless of your registration status.
One point though – ebay determine whether you are a business by sales in excess of a certain threshold. I can think of plenty of instances where a seller will legitimately class themselves as private + fall foul of this – e.g. selling off a personal collection of collectables e.t.c. which have been built up over the years and never purchased for the purposes of trade.
No doubt Ebay will (ahem) read the responses of these people and not rely on cutting and pasting email responses……
SD7970 says
8:22 pm on 04/07/2008
They should also be displaying their business address by law, Most are not, and as usual ebay are taking NO ACTION.