Ecommerce news: Terapeak changes and tax returns due

In this week’s ecommerce news Terapeak has announced a big change in its service, self assessment tax returns are looming, and sellers on Amazon France are hit with late dispatches after the Christmas bank holidays.

Terapeak changes

This week Terapeak announced that users will no longer be able to see eBay seller IDs when they use the service to do sales research. In an email sent out to its users, Terapeak outlined what will be different once this change comes into effect:

• Seller IDs will be hidden in search results. You can still find out the number of sellers for a product, and see them ranked by sales volume and activity, but the seller IDs will no longer be visible.
  
• Saved searches using seller IDs will be retired.
  

Read about changes to Terapeak’s service here.

Self assessment tax returns due

The deadline for online tax returns and payments is 31 January if you’re self employed. To send an online tax return you need to register in advance (if you didn’t complete one last year) - you need a Unique Tax Reference number and you need to be registered with the online government gateway before 31 January. Registering can take up to 20 working days, and you’ll also need accurate records about income and outgoings.

You’ll receive a £100 fine if your tax return is up to three months late, and more if it’s later or you pay your tax bill late.

Learn more about completing your self assessment tax return here.   

Amazon France late dispatches

A number of UK sellers with listings on Amazon France have found that they had shipments marked as late during the two bank holidays following Christmas. In the UK, 26 and 27 December were bank holidays, so it was not possible for sellers to dispatch items until the next working day, Wednesday 28 December. However, Amazon France made no allowance for these UK bank holidays, which has caused some seller’s accounts to become ‘At Risk’ or even suspended due to late shipments.

If you do sell on foreign marketplaces it’s important to keep track of whether they share the same holidays, as allowances aren’t always made for these differences. To avoid late dispatches you can extend your dispatch times or mark items as dispatched in advance of when they are collected (which is risky because the item may still arrive outside of Amazon’s expected delivery time).

Find out more about sellers affected by this problem here.