When selling on Vinted becomes a taxable trade, the GBP 1,000 trading allowance, allowable expenses, the data HMRC now sees, VAT and MTD explained for UK sellers.
The headline question every Vinted seller asks is the right one: do I actually owe tax on this? For most people the honest answer is no. Clearing out your own wardrobe, selling a coat you no longer wear or kids' clothes they have grown out of, is not a taxable trade, even if the total adds up over a year. HMRC does not tax you on disposing of your own belongings, and there is no Capital Gains Tax on personal clothing either.
The line that matters is whether you are trading. A seller who buys job lots to flip, sources stock from charity shops or wholesalers to resell at a markup, or makes items to sell, is running a business, and the profit is taxable. This guide is built around that distinction: how to tell which side of the line you are on, what the new platform-reporting rules really mean, the GBP 1,000 trading allowance, and the genuine expenses a reselling business can claim.
This is the whole game, so it is worth getting right. HMRC weighs a set of factors known as the badges of trade. No single one is decisive; it is the overall picture.
In plain terms: selling clothes you wore and have finished with, for less than you paid, is not trading, full stop, however large the total. Buying a bundle of trainers to resell, sourcing vintage to mark up, or sewing items to sell, is trading from the first sale. The grey area, owning something a while then selling it on for more than you paid, usually still is not a trade if it was genuinely yours and not bought to flip, though a large gain on a single high-value item could raise Capital Gains questions separately.
Since 2024, under OECD digital-platform reporting rules, Vinted (and eBay, Etsy, Depop, Airbnb and others) shares seller data with HMRC each January. Vinted reports a seller who, in a calendar year, makes around 30 or more sales or earns roughly EUR 2,000 equivalent.
A report is data, not a demand. HMRC receives your sales figures; it does not automatically decide you owe tax. The overwhelming majority of reported Vinted sellers are decluttering and owe nothing. What the rules do is end the era of assuming nobody is watching. If you genuinely are trading above GBP 1,000, declare it, because HMRC can now cross-check the platform numbers against your Self Assessment. The practical defence is good records: be able to show which sales were your own possessions and which were bought-to-resell stock.
If you are trading, the GBP 1,000 trading allowance is your friend. It lets you earn up to GBP 1,000 of gross trading income in a tax year tax-free and without registering for Self Assessment. The test is on gross receipts across all your casual trades combined, not profit and not per platform, so Vinted plus Depop plus a market stall all count together. Read more on how it works in our trading allowance guide.
Cross GBP 1,000 of trading income and you must register and report the full amount. You then get a choice each year: deduct the flat GBP 1,000 allowance instead of working out expenses, or deduct your actual allowable expenses, whichever leaves the lower profit. A reseller with low costs and high margins often does better claiming the flat GBP 1,000; a high-volume seller with real stock, postage and packaging costs usually does better claiming actuals. You cannot do both.
As a sole trader you pay Income Tax on profit, which is gross sales minus allowable expenses. For 2025/26 the personal allowance covers the first GBP 12,570, then you pay 20% to GBP 50,270, 40% to GBP 125,140 and 45% above, with the personal allowance tapering away between GBP 100,000 and GBP 125,140 to create an effective 60% band. Class 4 National Insurance is 6% on profit between GBP 12,570 and GBP 50,270 and 2% above, and Class 2 NIC is settled through Self Assessment.
Scottish sellers pay Scottish Income Tax on profit through six bands (19%, 20%, 21%, 42%, 45% and a 48% top rate) and carry an S-prefixed tax code; Welsh sellers have a C-coded code at rates currently matching the rest of the UK. National Insurance is UK-wide. Most Vinted traders run the side hustle alongside a job, so a PAYE salary often already uses up the personal allowance, meaning every pound of reselling profit is taxed from at least the basic rate up. If your code looks wrong, check it with the tax code checker, and model the combined picture with the multiple-income tax calculator.
An expense is allowable when incurred wholly and exclusively for the business. For a reseller the big ones are the cost of stock and the cost of getting it to the buyer.
| Expense | What qualifies | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of stock | What you paid for items bought to resell: job lots, bundles, wholesale, charity-shop sourcing | The single biggest deduction for most resellers |
| Vinted and platform fees | Buyer-protection or boost fees you pay, plus fees on other platforms you sell through | Deduct fees the platform charges you, not the buyer's fee |
| Postage and packaging | Postage labels, mailing bags, boxes, tissue, tape, thank-you cards | Keep every receipt; this adds up fast at volume |
| Mileage and travel | Trips to source stock or to the Post Office, at HMRC's 45p/25p flat rate | Log the miles; ordinary commuting does not count |
| Materials and repairs | Thread, buttons, cleaning, dry-cleaning or repairs to ready stock for sale | Only for items bought to resell, not personal items |
| Photography and listing kit | A backdrop, clothes rail, mannequin, ring light, props used to photograph stock | Apportion if also used personally |
| Phone and broadband | The business-use proportion of your mobile and internet | Exclude the private share |
| Home storage and admin | A fair flat-rate working-from-home allowance for the admin and storage you do at home | Choose the larger of flat-rate or a fair actual proportion |
| Subscriptions and software | Bookkeeping or inventory apps, a label printer's consumables | Fully deductible running costs |
| Accountancy and bank fees | Bookkeeping, Self Assessment help, a separate business account | Fully deductible |
The most common error resellers make is claiming the cost of stock they have not yet sold. You match the cost of an item against the year you sell it, not the year you buy it. Unsold stock at year end is carried forward, not deducted. So if you spend GBP 800 on bundles but only sell half by 5 April, roughly half the cost is this year's expense and the rest waits. Keep a simple list of what you bought, what it cost, and when it sold.
You cannot claim anything against the sale of your own used belongings, because those sales are not taxable in the first place, so there is no trade to set costs against. The original price of a personal coat you are now selling is irrelevant; it was never business stock. You also cannot claim the private share of dual-use costs like broadband and phone, and ordinary everyday clothing is never allowable even if you buy outfits to model your listings.
Take a seller who sources second-hand and vintage clothing to flip on Vinted alongside a part-time PAYE job that already uses their personal allowance.
Gross sales (trading only): GBP 14,000
Allowable expenses:
Taxable profit: GBP 14,000 minus GBP 8,600 = GBP 5,400
Because the PAYE job already uses the GBP 12,570 personal allowance, the full GBP 5,400 profit is taxed at 20% = GBP 1,080 Income Tax, plus Class 4 NIC where the combined position exceeds the threshold. Run your own figures through the sole trader tax calculator to see the precise bill once your employment income is factored in. Note how thin the margins are: GBP 14,000 of sales produced only GBP 5,400 of taxable profit, which is exactly why the gross-income MTD test matters so much for resellers.
For a Vinted trader the records that protect you are the boring ones: what you paid for stock, when each item sold, and which sales were your own wardrobe. That paper trail is what turns a platform report into a non-event.
You must register for VAT once taxable turnover from trading exceeds GBP 90,000 in any rolling 12-month period. The test is gross sales, not profit, so a high-volume flipper moving a lot of stock at thin margins can approach it faster than the profit suggests, even while most individual resellers never come close.
If you do register, the VAT margin scheme for second-hand goods is usually the right answer. It lets you charge VAT only on the difference between what you paid and what you sold for, rather than on the full selling price, which suits a reseller buying second-hand stock with no VAT to reclaim. Without the scheme you would charge VAT on the whole sale price while reclaiming little, which would wreck your margins on used clothing.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment replaces the annual return with quarterly digital submissions and a year-end finalisation. The thresholds are based on gross income, not profit:
This is the trap for resellers. Because the test is gross, a high-volume seller turning over GBP 35,000 at slim margins can be pulled into MTD from April 2027 even though profit is modest. Once in, you keep digital records and send HMRC a quarterly summary using compatible software, then finalise. The upside is that recording each sale, fee and postage cost as it happens, rather than reconstructing a chaotic year of Vinted payouts every January, makes a reselling business far easier to run. Our guide to MTD for sole traders walks through the quarterly rhythm.
Assuming a platform report means a tax bill. It does not. If you are only selling your own used items you owe nothing; the report is just data.
Treating personal sales as trading (or vice versa). Mixing your wardrobe clearout with bought-to-resell stock muddies your figures. Keep them separate from day one.
Claiming stock before it sells. Cost of goods is matched to the year of sale, not purchase. Unsold stock is carried forward.
Forgetting the PAYE allowance is already used. If a job uses your GBP 12,570 allowance, every pound of reselling profit is taxed from the basic rate up, so set money aside.
Ignoring the gross-income MTD test. Thin margins do not protect you; MTD turns on turnover, so a high-volume seller can be caught well before the profit feels significant.
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