Never Filed a Self Assessment Return Before? Here Is the Complete Guide for Vinted Sellers

Step One: Confirm Your Registration Is in Place

This catches more first-time filers than anything else. Not the calculation. Not the forms. The registration that should have happened months ago and may not have.

If your self-employment income, including Vinted sales, exceeded £1,000 in the 2025/26 tax year, you were required to register for Self Assessment. The deadline was 5 October 2026. That is less than four weeks away as you read this in September.

If you have not registered yet, do it today. Not this week. Today. Go to gov.uk and search Self Assessment registration. It takes around fifteen minutes. Your Unique Taxpayer Reference arrives by post within ten working days. You need it to file. Register this week and it will arrive with time to spare.

If October passes before you register, register anyway. Late registration is better than none. HMRC treats voluntary disclosure more leniently than being contacted first. Do not let a missed deadline become a reason to avoid sorting it altogether. That thinking is what turns a manageable situation into a serious one.

Work through these before moving on:

☐ You have registered for Self Assessment at gov.uk. If your Vinted income exceeded £1,000 in 2025/26, this is not optional.

☐ Your Unique Taxpayer Reference has arrived by post. A ten-digit number on a plain envelope. Check recent post if you registered in the past two weeks. Contact HMRC on 0300 200 3310 if it has not arrived within ten working days.

☐ Your Government Gateway account is active and you can log in. Your user ID and password are separate from your UTR. Both are needed. Test them now. Recovering a forgotten password takes days and is far more stressful in January.

☐ You know your National Insurance number. On your payslip, P60 or any HMRC letter. Format: two letters, six numbers, one letter.

Step Two: Get the Right Income Figure from Vinted

Something that surprises most Vinted sellers when they first encounter it. Vinted works differently from platforms like eBay or Etsy.

On eBay and Etsy, the platform deducts seller fees before paying sellers. What arrives in your bank is the net amount after charges. The gross figure is higher. That distinction matters on those platforms.

On Vinted, the model is different. Buyers pay a buyer protection fee separately. Sellers receive the full listed sale price with nothing deducted before it reaches them. What arrives in your bank account is the full amount the buyer paid.

So your Vinted income figure for Self Assessment is simply your total Vinted bank receipts for the year. There is no gross versus net calculation to work through. What you received is what you earned.

HMRC still receives your sales data from Vinted under DAC7 reporting rules. The figure they hold should match your bank receipts. For Vinted sellers, confirming this is straightforward in a way it is not on other platforms. The full picture of what HMRC now holds on Vinted sellers is covered in the article on HMRC and your Vinted sales.

Confirming your Vinted income total: Go to your Vinted profile. Click Selling. Go to Sales history. Download your sales for the period 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026. The total received is your Vinted income for the year.

If you also sold on eBay, Etsy or Depop during 2025/26, download the transaction report from each platform. Those platforms deduct seller fees before paying. For them you need the gross sales figure from the transaction report, not the bank payout, and the fees are claimed as a separate expense. The guide to gross income versus bank payouts for online sellers covers this in full for eBay, Etsy, Depop and Amazon.

Work through these before moving on:

☐ You have confirmed your total Vinted bank receipts for 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026. This is your income figure. Check it against your sales history in the Vinted app.

☐ If you also sold on other platforms, you have downloaded their transaction reports. eBay, Etsy and Depop require the gross sales figure from the report, not the bank payout.

☐ If you were also employed, you have your P60. Issued by your employer each April. It shows gross salary, income tax deducted and any student loan deducted. Jade's showed a salary of £18,500 and PAYE income tax of £1,186.

☐ You have checked bank statements for any income not in the Vinted report. Private sales, cash transactions or any selling activity outside the platform.

Step Three: Work Out Your Expenses

Jade's instinct was to claim nothing. She was not sure what counted. She had not kept formal records. She did not want to claim something she was not entitled to and end up in trouble.

That instinct costs sole traders hundreds of pounds every year. Not dishonesty. Just not knowing what HMRC allows.

HMRC allows any expense incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the trade. For a Vinted seller buying items to resell, the allowable list is longer than most people assume.

Stock purchases. Every item bought to resell. Charity shops, car boot sales, online marketplaces, anywhere. Every pound spent on stock that was subsequently sold is deductible. Go through bank statements and PayPal history for every stock purchase from April 2025 to April 2026.

Jade spent £3,800 on stock during the year. Most of it appeared on her bank statements and PayPal history. A few car boot purchases were cash with nothing recorded. She made a written note estimating those at £180 based on her known attendance and typical spend. A documented honest estimate is more credible than nothing. If you have very few records from 2025/26, the guide to reconstructing your records from bank statements covers the full process.

Postage and packaging. Every parcel posted. Labels, jiffy bags, bubble wrap, boxes. Check bank statements for Royal Mail, Evri, DPD and any other service used. Check PayPal for labels bought through the platform. Jade's total: £620.

Mileage. If you drove for business during 2025/26, the confirmed HMRC rate is 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles. Not 55p. That is the 2026/27 rate. For the 2025/26 return, 45p is correct.

Business miles include drives to car boots, charity shops, post offices, collection points. Jade drove regularly to sourcing spots and to post offices for batch drop-offs. She worked back through her calendar and a realistic estimate of regular journeys: 845 miles. At 45p: £380.

Phone proportion. If your phone is used for managing listings, messaging buyers and running the selling activity, the business proportion of the annual cost is claimable. Apply an honest estimated percentage to the annual contract or SIM cost. Jade used her phone around 30 percent for Vinted. Annual SIM cost: £400. Her claimable proportion: £120.

Work through these before moving on:

☐ Stock purchases identified from bank statements and PayPal history. Every item bought to resell from April 2025 to April 2026.

☐ Postage and packaging costs identified. From bank statements, PayPal history and any receipts kept.

☐ Mileage reconstructed and calculated at 45p per mile. Not 55p. That is the 2026/27 rate.

☐ Phone proportion estimated and applied. An honest percentage based on actual usage.

☐ You have chosen between the trading allowance and actual expenses. The £1,000 trading allowance needs no evidence or calculation but produces a higher taxable profit for any seller with real costs. If actual expenses exceed £1,000, they produce a lower bill. You cannot claim both. Jade's actual expenses came to £4,920. The trading allowance would have cost her significantly more in tax.

Step Four: Calculate What You Owe

This is the part Jade had been dreading since April. The number at the end. The one that tells her how much she owes and whether she has it.

Here is the calculation for someone in her exact position.

Gross Vinted income: £14,200 Less allowable expenses: £4,920 (stock £3,800, postage £620, mileage £380, phone £120) Trading profit: £9,280

Jade's teaching assistant salary of £18,500 went through payroll. Her employer applied the personal allowance of £12,570 against the salary and collected income tax of £1,186 on the remaining £5,930 at 20 percent. By the time the salary arrived in her account, the personal allowance was gone.

This is the point where most sellers with a day job get their first shock. Because the personal allowance is already used by the salary, the Vinted profit sits on top of already-taxable employment income. Nearly every pound of it is taxable at 20 percent. The full explanation of how employment and self-employment income interact is in the article on PAYE and self-employment in the same tax year.

Combined income: £18,500 + £9,280 = £27,780 Less personal allowance: £12,570 (applied once across combined income) Taxable income: £15,210 Gross income tax: £15,210 x 20% = £3,042 Less PAYE already collected through payroll: £1,186 Income tax owed through Self Assessment: £1,856

Class 4 National Insurance: Jade's trading profit of £9,280 is below the Class 4 NI lower threshold of £12,570. Class 4 NI: £0. (Class 2 NI was abolished in April 2024 and does not apply to the 2025/26 return.)

Total Self Assessment bill: £1,856