Guides

Online selling and HMRC: the numbers

Updated 30 July 2026. Figures checked against the GOV.UK pages linked below.

This page collects the verified numbers behind platform reporting to HMRC in one place, each with its source inline. It exists so that anyone writing about "side hustle tax", Vinted, eBay or the 30 items rule can check a figure quickly. Journalists are welcome to cite it; the note at the end explains how.

How many sellers get reported

• 3,988,892 seller accounts were reported to HMRC by digital platforms for calendar year 2025, according to freedom of information data obtained by the accountancy firm BDO.
• That is a 272% rise on the 1,466,171 seller accounts reported for calendar year 2024, per the same BDO FOI data.
• Reported sales for 2025 came to roughly £55 billion, up from about £25.5 billion for 2024, again per the BDO FOI data. HMRC notes the totals mix individual sellers with companies and other entities.

An account being reported says nothing about tax. The reports are a data feed, filed for everyone past the thresholds below, whether or not any tax is due.

The thresholds that trigger a report

A platform must report a seller who, on that platform, in one calendar year, passes either of two thresholds, per GOV.UK:

• 30 or more sales, whatever they were worth, or
• total sales of roughly 2,000 euros, which is about £1,700 to £1,735 depending on the exchange rate. The threshold is set in euros because the rule comes from the OECD's international framework.

Both thresholds count per platform and per calendar year, January to December, and reset every 1 January. Our 30 items rule guide unpacks the common misreadings.

The reporting waves

• The UK rules took effect on 1 January 2024, per GOV.UK.
• First wave: reports covering calendar year 2024 reached HMRC by 31 January 2025. That wave covered 1,466,171 seller accounts.
• Second wave: reports covering calendar year 2025 reached HMRC by 31 January 2026. That wave covered 3,988,892 seller accounts, the 272% jump above, largely because platforms had a full year of the rules in place and more platforms filed. BDO's FOI data counted 811 platform operators filing for 2025.
• Platforms must give each reported seller a copy of what was sent, by the same 31 January deadline. Our DAC7 seller report guide explains what is in it.

The tax numbers

• £1,000 is the trading allowance: gross trading income at or under it in a tax year is normally covered, with nothing to pay and normally nothing to file for that income, per GOV.UK. Selling your own possessions is generally not trading at all, so for many reported sellers no tax arises in the first place. Our trading allowance guide covers the detail.
• £3,000 is the coming Self Assessment reporting threshold for trading income. The government announced on 11 March 2025 that the filing threshold will rise from £1,000 to £3,000 gross within this parliament, taking up to 300,000 people out of tax returns, around 90,000 of whom will have no tax to pay and nothing to report at all; the rest will use a new simpler online service, per GOV.UK. The £1,000 trading allowance itself is unchanged: this moves the filing line, not the tax line.

HMRC's own words

Angela MacDonald, HMRC's Second Permanent Secretary and Deputy Chief Executive, said in HMRC's December 2024 statement on online selling: "We cannot be clearer: if you are not trading and just occasionally sell unwanted items online, there is no tax due." The full statement is on GOV.UK.

The compliance campaign

HMRC has followed the platform data with a multi-million-pound compliance campaign of "one to many" nudge letters to sellers whose reported activity it cannot match to a tax return. The letters give the recipient 30 days to respond, per the letter text published by the Chartered Institute of Taxation, and BDO reported the campaign starting in early 2025 with further activity expected. Receiving one is not an accusation, and for many recipients the honest answer is that nothing was due; our HMRC letter guide covers how to respond.

What our own checker sees

Aggregate checker statistics will be published here once the sample is meaningful: the share of checks that come out as likely reported, and the share where the answer is that no tax would normally be due.

Citing this page

Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite the figures on this page with attribution to Am I Reported? and a link to it. Every figure above carries its original source inline, and we re-check them against those sources on the dated cycle shown at the top of the page; see how the check works for our corrections policy. For queries, comment or data requests, email hello@amireported.co.uk.