Many people earn additional income on trading platforms such as Etsy, eBay and Vinted: whether from self-made rag dolls, knitwear or paintings. Up to now, this kind of thing was mostly done “underhand”, but that is now over: A new EU tax law means that these platforms have to report sales to the tax authorities - and under certain circumstances they also want to see the income in their tax returns!

The new EU tax law

The EU tax law, which has been in force since the beginning of 2023, has the tapeworm name (Scrabble players beware) of the Platform Tax Transparency Act (PStTG) . It obliges the operators of online trading platforms to report the income of providers to the responsible tax authorities.

Which sellers are affected?

However, the platform operators do not have to do this for every seller, but only if certain general conditions are met:

  • More than 30 items were sold per year
  • The total sales value must be over 2,000 euros

Both must be met! So if you sell a motorcycle on eBay for 2,500 euros, for example, the tax authorities won't immediately turn their attention to you.

However, if both conditions are met, the operators of the trading platforms must provide the tax authorities with extensive data: name, date of birth, tax identification number, postal address, bank details and all relevant transactions including the sales proceeds and the fees incurred.

Important: Document sales!

So if you regularly sell things on trading platforms and the total sales value exceeds 2,000 euros, the tax authorities will know. But the “mean” thing about it is, and you can definitely call it a tax trap: They want to know it again from you!

And you can quickly fall into a tax trap if you have not documented the sales precisely, i.e. have no receipts for the sales, the costs and the profits (or losses). If these are incomplete, which the tax authorities can quickly see based on the information from the trading platforms, tax evasion could be suspected.

Airbnb also affected

Also important to know: The new EU tax law not only affects all trading platforms such as eBay, Etsy and Vinted, but also the popular room brokerage platform Arbnb and all similar platforms.

Basically all portals on which goods or services are offered for a fee. In addition, all information is exchanged between the EU member states. In this way, the tax authorities want to find previously unknown tax cases and generate additional income.

Article image: Pixabay

Further sources:

Frankfurter Rundschau , Basic Thinking
Also interesting: cover letters from the contribution service including payment requests regularly end up in the mailbox.
Ignoring is not a solution. – Post service – Respond to mail correctly, don’t ignore mail


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