Income and Wallapop: when should you declare what you sell

If these days you are preparing to file the 2020 Income Statement, remember. Did you sell any belongings through second-hand platforms like Wallapop, Vinted or Milanuncios? Then you may have to include those transactions.

This is not the case in all cases, as Joan Pons, secretary of EFPA Spain and managing partner of the ETL GLOBAL LINKS firm, clarifies. If during the past year you have sold things on Wallapop, you should declare it "as long as you are obliged to present a Declaration" -here you can check who gets rid of it-.

What must be taken into account, beyond whether what has been sold is a garment for 10 euros or a car for 10,000, is whether there has been a profit or not.

The key, whether you make a profit or not

"You have to calculate the difference between the selling price and how much what I'm selling cost me," he says. For example, if a bike that cost 500 is sold for 200 euros, "there is a loss of value -300 euros- that corresponds to private use" that should not be declared, there is no profit.

In the opposite case, that of a profit, "you are obliged to declare it." For example, selling a toy from when you were little (and that cost much less) for 1,000 euros because it is now a collector's item. "You have to prove the acquisition value," warns this expert. In other words, if there is no way to prove how much it cost when it was purchased, the 1,000 euros would have to be declared as profit in full.

Beware also those who sell through second-hand platforms on a recurring basis, because "it can be considered that they are developing an economic activity". The benefits would not be taxed as a capital gain, but as a professional activity. That is, as if he were a self-employed worker.

For now, although the alarms went off in 2017, surveillance of these transactions is not very exhaustive, but Pons warns that it may intensify in the future when the intermediary is forced to provide information to the Tax Agency: "Everything will come, when the legislator incorporates that obligation, as he is going to do with cryptocurrencies.”

In the event that you are not a seller but a buyer through apps such as Wallapop, "since the person who sells you is an individual and what you also have to pay is the Property Transfer Tax", the rate of which varies according to the autonomous communities .