Sales on Vinted, BlaBlaCar, eBay... What must be declared?

Do online earnings from selling items on sites such as Vinted, Airbnb and eBay need to be declared for French tax?

There is no single answer to this as it depends on the nature and amount of the income. In some cases the income is declarable, in some it is not.

Note that online platforms based in France have a legal obligation to inform you about tax obligations and also to send you a summary of your earnings on the site in the previous year. This is sent around the start of the year.

Websites are also obliged to make a declaration of your income to the tax office if you made €2,000 or more and carried out 30 transactions or more in the year.

Where the earnings have been notified to the tax office this income will be shown during your income tax declaration – however this is for your information and you do not necessarily have to transfer the figures to the main boxes of the declaration. It is for you to decide what is declarable.

Selling online

In the case of selling on online sites such as eBay or Vinted or leboncoin, income that comes from making items and selling them, or buying and reselling items has to be declared.

This will usually be declarable as micro-Bic income unless you opt for taxation under the régime réel (this is unlikely if this is top-up income and not a main business).

This is not the case if you are selling your own everyday items, e.g. used clothes, old books or electrical goods.

Essentially there would only be a declarable income here if you were considered to have made a capital gain but in the vast majority of cases you will probably sell for less than you paid for the item.

There is an exception in the case of selling antiques, objets d’art, precious metals and jewels and similar valuables and collectibles. In some cases these are declarable (and payable) on special forms within a month of sale.

This is either for a flat tax or under the ordinary regime of capital gains on sales of so called ‘moveable property’ (in French law this refers to everything you own apart from buildings and land) if you have paperwork to prove the gain.

With the exception of precious metals where all sales are taxable, this only concerns sales for amounts of more than €5,000.

Capital gains on moveable property are also transferred to box 3VZ in the main online annual declaration (or paper form 2042C) to be accounted for in your overall net income figure for the year.

Sales of people’s ordinary home furnishings or home electrical and white goods are not affected by this.

Car-sharing

With regard to car-sharing on sites such as BlaBlaCar, the general rule is that if you are doing this on a non-profit basis, to help cover your own expenses in making a trip, and you factor in a part of the cost for yourself, then it is not declarable or taxable.

The amount asked for should not exceed the barème kilométrique used by the tax office for travel expenses. See here for a tool to calculate this: https://www.impots.gouv.fr/simulateur-bareme-kilometrique.

If any of the above factors do not apply then the income is declarable under the micro-Bic regime.