Do I owe tax on my online sales?

It depends on whether HMRC sees you as trading, and on your other income. Selling off your own possessions usually isn't taxable; buying to resell often is. The free guide explains how that line is drawn.

I already have an accountant — is the response kit still useful?

Yes — accountants bill for time, and most of the cost of an enquiry is them untangling your records. Arrive with an organised evidence pack and rebuilt gross-to-net figures and you pay for their judgement, not their untangling.

The deadline on my HMRC letter has passed — is it too late?

No, but don't wait longer. Responding late is treated very differently from not responding at all. Engage, or ask for more time — and if the sums are significant, consider professional help.

HMRC letter about your online selling?

Sound familiar?

The letter lands, and suddenly you owe two years of records you never kept.

The gross-vs-net trap

You sold for £100, £82.95 hit your account — and HMRC wants the £100 declared. Get that one wrong and every figure after it is wrong too.

net £82.95 → gross £100.00

Exports that don't agree

PayPal says one thing, your bank another, the platform a third. Matching fees and postage to each sale by hand is a weekend you'll never get back.

paypal.csv · bank.csv · ebay.csv

A deadline with teeth

Penalties can land on top of the tax owed — and they climb the longer a letter sits unanswered. The clock starts the day it arrives.

respond by: check your letter

The figure that trips everyone

Gross is what you sold for — not what you kept.

This is the single thing that catches sellers out. Your taxable income starts from the full price the buyer paid, before the platform took its cut and before postage came out. Those costs come off later, as expenses — but only if you can show them.

ExpenseTidy reads each export, matches the fees and postage back to the sale they belong to, and rebuilds the true gross figure — with every line traceable to the statement it came from.

A £100 sale is £100 of income. The £17 of fees and postage is a deduction — kept separate, evidenced, ready.

Rebuilt from your exports

Buyer paid gross£100.00

Platform fee−£13.20

Postage−£3.85

Payment fee−£0.00

Declare as income£100.00

Why this exists

I've been on the wrong end of one of these letters.

I'm Kris. A few years ago, HMRC opened a discovery assessment into my old eBay electronics side-hustle — multiple tax years of it. My records were a shoebox: PayPal exports, bank statements and marketplace screenshots that didn't agree with each other, and a deadline that didn't care.

I rebuilt the whole thing by hand. Every sale traced from gross to net. Every fee and postage label matched back to the order it belonged to. Expenses — stock, postage, mileage, tools, use of home — evidenced line by line and set out so a stranger could follow them. HMRC accepted the figures.

ExpenseTidy is that process, turned into something you can use: the templates I wrote, the structure that worked, and — soon — the tool that does the matching for you.

"The figures held because every line traced back to a statement. That's the whole method — and it's learnable in an afternoon."

— Kris · ExpenseTidy

The reconstruction tool · early access

Three steps from a shoebox of exports to a tidy record.

Export

Download whatever you've got — PayPal, your bank, eBay, Vinted, Etsy. CSV files, however messy. No need to tidy them first.

Reconstruct

ExpenseTidy reads them on your device, matches fees and postage to each sale, and rebuilds your true gross-to-net figures.

Stand behind it

You get a clean summary and a line-by-line trail — the paper you, or your accountant, need the moment HMRC asks "where's this from?"

Let's be straight

What ExpenseTidy is — and what it isn't.

Being clear about this is the whole point. You're holding evidence, not advice.

It is

A way to turn raw exports into an organised, defensible record.
A clear trail behind every figure, so nothing is a guess.
Run on your device — only anonymised transaction descriptors are ever sent for categorisation, never your files.

It isn't

A filing tool — it won't submit your return for you.
Tax advice, and it isn't your accountant.
A verdict on what you owe — it shows what happened, clearly.

Start here — free, no email needed

Plain-English guides for sellers who'd rather not panic.

The letter

I've had a nudge letter from HMRC. What now?

What it actually means, what it doesn't, and the calm order to do things in before the deadline.

Read the guide Coming this week The figure

Gross vs net: the £100 sale that trips everyone up

Why HMRC wants the full sale price, where the fees and postage go, and how to evidence both.

Get notified Coming this week The line

Trading or just decluttering? How HMRC decides

The "badges of trade" in plain terms, with real examples of where casual selling tips into taxable.

Get notified

The £39 response kit

Everything I wish I'd had the day the letter landed.

The exact templates and structure from the response HMRC accepted — cleaned up, generalised, and ready to use. Not advice; a working method.

The response letter template

The covering-letter structure that carried my own reply — the tone, the sections, and how to keep it factual and calm.

The evidence pack structure

How to organise statements, exports and screenshots into numbered exhibits HMRC can actually follow.

The gross-to-net worked example

A filled-in spreadsheet showing a year rebuilt from PayPal and bank exports — copy the method with your own numbers.

The reseller expense checklist

The cost categories to gather evidence for — stock, fees, postage, mileage, use of home — organised so your accountant can confirm what's claimable.

The first-72-hours checklist

What to do, in order, before you write a single word to HMRC — including the mistakes that make things worse.

£39 · one-off · instant download

Five documents. Yours to keep, use for any tax year, and hand straight to your accountant.

Get the kit — £39

30-day guarantee: if it doesn't make your response clearer, reply to your receipt and I'll refund it in full. No forms, no fuss.

For context: an accountant untangling this from scratch typically bills more than this per hour.

Not there yet?

Start with the free guide

The nudge-letter survival guide plus the occasional plain-English email when the rules shift. Unsubscribe any time.

Get the free guide

Years of mess to untangle?

Join the tool early access

Upload your exports and let ExpenseTidy rebuild the figures and the trail — processed on your device. Early list gets founding pricing.

Join early access

Questions worth asking

The honest answers.

Your statement files are read and processed on your own device — they aren't uploaded to our servers. When the categorisation tool launches, only anonymised transaction descriptions (no names, account numbers or references) are sent for classification. Your files and personal details stay with you.

No. ExpenseTidy organises your records into clear evidence — it doesn't tell you what to declare or what you owe. For advice on your specific position, speak to a qualified accountant. The kit and tool simply make their job, and yours, far quicker.

It depends on whether HMRC sees you as trading, and on your other income. Selling off your own old things usually isn't taxable; buying to resell often is. The free guide walks through how that line is drawn — including the £1,000 trading allowance.

Yes — arguably more so. Accountants bill for time, and most of the cost of an enquiry is them untangling your records. Arrive with the evidence pack organised and the gross-to-net figures rebuilt, and you're paying for their judgement instead of their untangling.

No — but don't wait longer. Responding late is treated very differently from not responding at all, and engaging (or asking for more time) is almost always better than silence. If the sums involved are significant, this is also the point to bring in a professional.

Anything you can export as a CSV — PayPal, most UK banks, eBay, Vinted, Etsy, Depop and Amazon among them. If you can download a statement, ExpenseTidy can read it.

It's the best time. Reconstructing your records now, calmly, is far easier than scrambling after a letter arrives with a deadline attached. Tidy once, and you're ready either way.

Start with the easy bit

Get the free nudge-letter guide.

The calm, plain-English walkthrough of what to do if HMRC gets in touch about your online sales — and how to be ready if they do.

Got it — the guide will land in your inbox shortly.

Signup didn't go through — please try again in a moment.

No spam, no card. Just the guide and the odd useful update.