Do you realise you have to report your ebay earnings to Centrelink?

[joan.lesley]

Had some dealings with centrelink this week and blow me down I have to report my earnings for my HOBBIE every item sold each fortnight. No deductions, if I have something up with FREE postage I have to include the postage  as earnings also. So have had to end all items with FREE postage and alter them before relisting with postage extra, bang goes this ebay Top Seller sh....t.

I am so deflated.

Please beware all you ebay sellers on centrelink/pensioner payments.

[digital*ghost]

Tell them it's not a hobby, maybe.

Then they'll require you to submit a profit/loss statement every few months (along with copies of tax statements each year), where you can list gross revenue, less all costs, and they'll average out the profit over the weeks it applies to and consider that your average fortnightly earnings unless / until you advise otherwise. 

[dylan11235813]

when I was receiving centrelink they made me do profit loss statements every 2 weeks, that included all costs including new stock. They also required a business number which I didn't have at the time and cut me off. I told them it was a hobby and I didn't need a business number, I also wasn't making a profit and was costing me money. You should definately tell them about any income you get from selling.

If they say you can't claim a postage cost to offset what is comming in it would seem a bit strange.

[dylan11235813]

DG beat me to it 🙂

I didn't actually end up needing the ABN after I called them heaps of times and said it was not a business as defined by the ATO. Maybe it was. I still had to do the statements though.

[joan.lesley]

Centrelink are going to average it out over 12 months. They do not realise thast we are hardly selling a thing now.

[dylan11235813]

Say if you sold $2000 worth in one week averaged over the year do you mean 52 x $2000 OR $2000/52

[lyndal1838]

Dylan, averaging means adding up the total of sales over 12 months then dividing by 52 for earnings per week or 12 for earnings per month.

[dylan11235813]

that is how I would take it too but it seemed like the OP was not happy with them doing that. I would have thought that would be the best.

I thought the OP may have meant something like an average $2000 per month so for the year it is $24000. Something like that anyway.

[dylan11235813]

Also I do know what averaging means, I am fairly sure most people know what it is.

[lyndal1838]

---

@dylan11235813 wrote:

Also I do know what averaging means, I am fairly sure most people know what it is.

---

Sorry Dylan, but the question you asked made it look like you were not sure what averaging means.

There is no way Centrelink could take the amount earned in one month and assume that the OP was going to earn the same every month.