Every Expense Vinted, eBay and Etsy Sellers Can Claim: The Complete Guide
Every expense Vinted, eBay and Etsy sellers can claim against their trading income, from platform fees and postage to mileage, photography equipment and returns postage. Includes a calculator showing whether actual expenses beats the trading allowance for your numbers.
RUNNING A BUSINESS
Most online sellers know they can deduct expenses from their trading income before calculating their tax bill. What most do not know is exactly which expenses qualify, how to calculate them correctly for platform selling specifically, and whether claiming actual expenses even produces a better result than the £1,000 trading allowance.
This post covers every legitimate expense category available to online sellers, with platform-specific guidance where the rules work differently from what you might expect.
The Expenses vs Trading Allowance Decision
Before listing every claimable expense, it is worth being clear on when claiming them actually matters. The £1,000 trading allowance lets you deduct £1,000 from your gross income regardless of what your actual costs were. You do not need receipts, records or categories to claim it. You just claim it.
If your total allowable expenses add up to more than £1,000, claiming actual expenses produces a lower taxable profit and a lower tax bill. If they add up to less than £1,000, the allowance beats them and all the expense tracking you did was technically unnecessary.
For most sellers in the early stages with modest costs, the allowance wins. For sellers who have been buying significant stock, paying substantial platform fees and making regular sourcing trips, actual expenses often wins by a meaningful margin. The calculator below shows your position based on your real numbers. Our post on when not to claim the trading allowance covers the decision in full if you want to understand the mechanics before running the numbers.
Use the Calculator First.
The Full Expenses List
Cost of Goods Sold
The cost of stock you bought specifically to resell is your largest and most significant deductible expense. This is the amount you actually paid for items at charity shops, car boot sales, wholesale suppliers or any other source, where you bought them with the intention of reselling them at a profit.
Personal items you happen to sell are not included here. If you are clearing out your own wardrobe alongside selling sourced stock, only the cost of the stock you bought to resell goes in this column. Our post on why your bank balance is not your profit explains how to separate these correctly in your records.
Under the cash basis, which is now the default for most sole traders, you deduct the cost of stock when you buy it, not when you sell it. This means a significant stock purchase in March reduces your taxable profit even if the items have not sold before the tax year ends on 5 April.
Platform Fees
Platform fees are deductible as a business expense. How they arise differs by platform.
On eBay, the Final Value Fee of approximately 12.8% is deducted before your payout arrives. Your gross income for tax purposes is the full sale price. The fee is a deductible expense. Both the gross income and the fee need separate entries in your records, not just the net payout.
On Etsy, you face multiple fee types: transaction fees at 6.5%, payment processing fees at approximately 4% plus 20p, listing fees at 18p per item, and any Etsy Plus or Pattern subscription charges. All are deductible.
On Vinted, there are no seller fees at all. The buyer pays the protection fee. Your gross income equals your listing price and there are no platform fees to deduct.
Postage and Delivery
Every penny you spend on postage and delivery for items you sell is a deductible expense. This includes Royal Mail stamps, tracked postage, Hermes and Evri shipments, Click and Drop charges, and any courier costs. It also includes postage paid on returns where you cover the cost of a buyer returning an item.
Keep records of postage costs separately from packaging materials. Both are claimable but they are different expense categories and mixing them obscures your actual cost picture.
Packaging Materials
Bubble wrap, poly mailers, cardboard boxes, tissue paper, void fill, packaging tape, labels and thank you cards are all deductible business expenses when used to pack items you sell. This includes the tape dispenser, label printer rolls and any other consumables used in the packing process.
The packaging for personal items you are selling as part of a clearout is not claimable because personal disposal is not a trading activity. Only packaging used for trading stock qualifies.
Our post on claiming packaging, bubble wrap and shipping supplies as a business expense covers this specific expense category in full detail.
Mileage
If you drive for business purposes connected to your online selling, you can claim 55p per mile from 6 April 2026 under HMRC's Approved Mileage Allowance Payment rates. Qualifying journeys include driving to the post office to send parcels, driving to charity shops or car boot sales to source stock, driving to collect purchased stock, and driving to any boot fair or market where you sell trading stock.
The mileage claim requires a contemporaneous log: date, start and end point, business purpose, and miles driven. Recording it at the time of the journey rather than reconstructing it later is essential. A phone note or shared spreadsheet updated after each trip is sufficient. Our full guide to the 55p mileage rate covers which journeys qualify and exactly what records HMRC expects to see.
Storage and Packing Space
If you use part of your home to store stock or pack orders, a proportion of your home running costs is deductible as a business expense. The calculation is based on the floor area used for business purposes as a proportion of the total floor area of the home.
For example, if your packing room is 10 square metres and your home is 100 square metres, 10 percent of your home running costs, rent or mortgage interest, utilities, council tax and buildings insurance, is potentially deductible as a business expense.
There is an important distinction between this calculation and the simplified home office flat rate. The simplified rate of £6 to £26 per month based on hours worked applies to hours spent working at home. Pure storage of stock uses the floor area apportionment method instead.
Our post on claiming your spare room for storage and packing covers the calculation in full, including the Capital Gains Tax consideration that applies if the room is used exclusively for business.
Photography Equipment
If you photograph your items before listing them, the equipment you use exclusively for that purpose is a legitimate business expense. Ring lights, lightboxes, backdrops, phone stands and any other equipment used solely for product photography can be deducted.
If the equipment is also used for personal purposes, only the business proportion is claimable. A ring light you use exclusively for product photography before every listing is fully deductible. One you also use for video calls with family is only partially so.
Business Mobile Phone
If you use your mobile phone for business purposes including listing items, communicating with buyers, processing orders and checking tracking, a proportion of your mobile phone bill is a deductible expense. The proportion should reflect how much of your actual phone use relates to the business. Our published post on claiming your mobile phone as a business expense covers how to calculate and justify the business proportion.
Returns Postage
When a buyer returns an item and you cover the cost of the return postage, that cost is a deductible expense. Keep the receipt or the payment confirmation from your tracked return label as evidence.
This is one of the most commonly missed deductions for online sellers who offer free returns on eBay or Etsy as a selling strategy. The postage cost for every return is real money leaving your business and it reduces your taxable profit in exactly the same way as outbound postage does.
Stationery, Labels and Consumables
Printer ink, label rolls, receipt paper, address labels and any stationery used specifically for the business are all deductible. This category is worth tracking consistently even though individual purchases are small, because across a full year the total can be meaningful.
Subscriptions and Software
eBay store subscriptions, Etsy Plus subscriptions, selling tools, keyword research tools and any software used specifically for the business are deductible. The UK Online Seller Tax Template at £14.99 per year is itself a deductible professional fee, as are accountancy fees for preparing your Self Assessment return.
What You Cannot Claim
Personal items sold at a loss are not trading income and the costs associated with them are not claimable. Meals at car boot sales are not claimable. Clothing worn while packing or selling is not claimable unless it is a branded uniform. Travel costs for personal shopping trips that happen to include a stop at a charity shop are not claimable even if you buy stock while there.
Gross Income Matters More Than Expenses
One point that runs through every expenses decision for online sellers is that your gross income, not your bank balance, is what HMRC measures your trading activity against. If you are recording net payouts rather than gross sale prices, your gross income figure is understated, which means your expense-to-income comparison is also wrong.
Before deciding whether actual expenses or the trading allowance produces a better result, make sure your gross income figure is accurate. Our post on the gross income trap covers exactly why the two figures differ and how to use the correct one.
Bookkeeping
Email:
Contact Us
support@rhodiumaccounting.co.uk
© 2026. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
Monthly Management Reporting
Budgets & Forecasts
Cash flow Optimisation
Processes and Controls