You run a self-hosted WooCommerce store. Sales land in your bank, the plugin shows your totals, and nobody from a marketplace is sending HMRC a year-end summary on your behalf. So a fair question follows: does anyone tell HMRC what you sold, or is that entirely on you?
It is entirely on you. That is the single most important thing to understand about selling on your own site. There is no marketplace operator sitting between you and your customer, so there is no third party collecting VAT, no deemed-supplier rules, and no digital-platform report filed about your sales. You self-declare everything.
This guide explains exactly what you report, when, and how, with the current 2025/26 figures. It is written for UK-based sole traders and limited companies running WooCommerce, and it spells out where a self-hosted store differs from selling on Amazon or eBay.
Does WooCommerce report my sales to HMRC?
No. WooCommerce is self-hosted software running on your own hosting, so nobody is reporting your sales to HMRC on your behalf. You are responsible for declaring your income yourself.
This is a genuine point of confusion, because since 1 January 2024 the UK has had reporting rules for digital platforms. Under those rules, certain platform operators have to collect and check details about their sellers and report them to HMRC each January, starting with data for 2024 reported by 31 January 2025 (gov.uk: selling goods or services on a digital platform).
That is why an eBay or Vinted seller might get a message saying their information has been shared with HMRC once they pass certain thresholds in a year.
But those rules are aimed at operators who connect third-party sellers to buyers. HMRC's own guidance is explicit that you do not need to register or report as a platform operator if you only "sell your own goods or services directly through your own website or app" (gov.uk: reporting rules for digital platforms).
A standard WooCommerce store selling your own products is exactly that scenario. No platform report gets filed about you, by anyone, ever. The flip side is that HMRC hears nothing automatically, so the duty to declare sits entirely with you.
Why is a self-hosted site different from Amazon or eBay?
When you sell through a large online marketplace, the operator does a lot of tax plumbing in the background. On your own WooCommerce site, you do all of it. Here is the contrast.
| Responsibility | Amazon / eBay marketplace | Your self-hosted WooCommerce site |
|---|---|---|
| Who reports your sales to HMRC | The marketplace files a digital-platform report on you once you pass the thresholds | Nobody. You self-declare on your tax return |
| Who accounts for VAT on certain sales | Marketplace can be the "deemed supplier" and collect VAT on some sales (for example, goods of an overseas seller, or imported consignments of £135 or less) | You account for all your own VAT |
| Who sets the VAT rate charged at checkout | The marketplace platform | Your plugin and tax settings, which you configure |
| Who decides if you are trading | You, but the data still flows to HMRC | You, and HMRC has no automatic data feed |
The deemed-supplier rules that make a marketplace responsible for VAT in some cases come from HMRC's guidance on overseas goods sold through online marketplaces (gov.uk: VAT and overseas goods sold to customers in the UK using online marketplaces). None of that machinery exists on your own domain. There is no operator to be the deemed supplier, so you are the supplier for everything you sell.
The practical takeaway: running your own store gives you control, but it moves every compliance task onto your side of the table. If you sell on a marketplace as well, you keep two sets of records, because the VAT treatment can differ between the two channels.
When do I need to tell HMRC about my WooCommerce income?
If you are running your store as a business (buying or making goods to sell at a profit), you are trading, and trading income is taxable. HMRC has been clear that the digital-platform reporting rules changed nothing here: the same tax rules apply whether you sell through a marketplace or your own site, and the existence of a report "does not automatically mean the individual needs to complete a tax return" (gov.uk: no tax changes for online sellers).
What triggers a duty to tell HMRC is your level of trading income, not the platform.
For a sole trader, the key figure is the trading allowance. You can earn up to £1,000 of gross trading income in a tax year tax-free, and if that is all you make from the activity you usually do not need to tell HMRC or file a return. Once your gross trading income goes over £1,000, you need to register for Self Assessment and report it (gov.uk: tax-free allowances on property and trading income).
"Gross" means your total takings before you deduct any costs. For most real WooCommerce businesses, turnover sails past £1,000 quickly, so Self Assessment applies.
The deadlines that follow from this, for the 2025/26 tax year, are:
| Action | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Register for Self Assessment | 5 October 2026 (5 October after the tax year ends) |
| File a paper return | midnight 31 October 2026 |
| File online | midnight 31 January 2027 |
| Pay the tax you owe | midnight 31 January 2027 |
Source: gov.uk: Self Assessment deadlines.
If your store is run through a limited company, the picture is different: the company reports its profits on a Corporation Tax return (CT600) and pays Corporation Tax, and you report any salary or dividends you take personally. The trading allowance does not apply to company income.
Do I need to register for VAT on my WooCommerce sales?
You must register for VAT if your taxable turnover goes over the registration threshold of £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period, or if you expect to go over it in the next 30 days alone (gov.uk: VAT registration thresholds).
It is a rolling 12-month test, not your accounting year or the tax year. You check it every month against the previous 12 months. If you cross £90,000, you must register within 30 days of the end of the month in which you went over, and your effective date is the first day of the second month after that.
Here is the part that catches WooCommerce sellers specifically. On a self-hosted store, the VAT charged at checkout is whatever your tax settings and plugins tell it to be. WooCommerce will happily run with zero tax configured, or with the wrong rate, or with tax applied to the wrong products. The software does not know you have crossed the threshold. That is a real and common failure mode, and it is your responsibility to catch it.
Once registered, the standard UK VAT rate is 20%, with a reduced rate of 5% and a zero rate of 0% for certain goods (gov.uk: VAT rates). You then need to configure your store to charge the correct rate, show VAT-compliant invoices, and file VAT returns under Making Tax Digital using compatible software, which is mandatory for all VAT-registered businesses (gov.uk: Making Tax Digital for VAT).
In practice, the most common mistakes we see on self-hosted stores are: leaving prices set as "VAT exclusive" when customers expect inclusive pricing, applying 20% to zero-rated goods such as most food or children's clothing, and forgetting to register at all because the plugin never warned them. A quick channel-by-channel VAT review is worth doing the moment you can see £90,000 of annual turnover on the horizon. Our ecommerce accounting service is built around exactly this kind of multi-channel check.
What about VAT on WooCommerce orders I ship abroad?
Once you are VAT-registered, shipping orders overseas changes the VAT treatment, and again there is no marketplace to handle it for you.
If you are a Great Britain business sending goods to a customer outside the UK, you do not normally charge UK VAT on them. You can zero-rate the export as long as you obtain and keep valid evidence of export within 3 months of the sale, and you must not zero-rate a sale if the customer asks you to deliver to a UK address (gov.uk: VAT exports, dispatches and supplying goods abroad). You keep that evidence for 6 years and include export sales in box 6 of your VAT return.
That sounds simple, and for the UK VAT side it largely is. The catch sits at the destination. When your parcel arrives in an EU country, import VAT (and possibly duty) can be due there, and unless you have arranged otherwise your customer can be hit with an unexpected bill before they receive the goods. Sellers of low-value consignments into the EU often look at the Import One Stop Shop to collect that VAT at checkout instead, so the buyer is not surprised.
Northern Ireland follows different rules for goods moving to the EU, including the One Stop Shop for distance sales (gov.uk: completing a One Stop Shop VAT return). If you are NI-based, treat your EU sales as a separate question and get advice before you set your plugin's tax rules.
The point for a WooCommerce seller is that your store's tax engine has to be configured to reflect all of this. A plugin set to slap 20% UK VAT on every order, including exports, is both overcharging your overseas customers and misstating your VAT return.
Can I claim my WooCommerce tech stack as an expense?
Running a self-hosted store has real running costs, and most of them are allowable deductions against your trading profits. The question is whether each cost is revenue (deduct in full this year) or capital (treated differently).
As a general guide for a typical store:
- Day-to-day running costs are revenue expenses. Hosting, your domain renewal, SSL, monthly plugin and theme subscriptions, payment-gateway fees, email and SMS tools, and routine maintenance are ongoing costs of trading and are normally deductible in the year you incur them.
- Building a substantial, long-lived asset can be capital. A large one-off spend to design and build the website itself, or a major custom development that creates a lasting asset, can fall on the capital side rather than being a simple running cost.
Where a cost is capital and you are a limited company, capital allowances may apply, and the Annual Investment Allowance lets you claim 100% of qualifying plant and machinery up to £1,000,000 (gov.uk: capital allowances and the Annual Investment Allowance). The treatment of website and software costs is one of those areas where the detail matters and getting it wrong is easy, so it is worth a quick check rather than a guess.
Whichever way a cost falls, keep the invoices. On a self-hosted store these are scattered across hosting providers, plugin vendors and your payment processor, and reconstructing them at year-end is painful.
A walkthrough: what a WooCommerce seller actually files
Here is how the pieces fit together for a typical sole trader. The figures are illustrative.
Illustrative example: Aisha, a sole trader selling homeware on her own WooCommerce site (2025/26)
Aisha sells through her own self-hosted store. No marketplace is involved, so nobody reports her to HMRC. In 2025/26 her store records:
- Gross sales (turnover): £62,000
- Cost of goods sold: £24,000
- Hosting, plugins, theme and gateway fees: £1,800
- Packaging, postage and other running costs: £6,200
Because her gross trading income is well over the £1,000 trading allowance, she must register for Self Assessment and report the income.
Her taxable profit is calculated as turnover minus allowable expenses:
£62,000 − £24,000 − £1,800 − £6,200 = £30,000 profit.
Her turnover of £62,000 is below the £90,000 VAT registration threshold, so she is not required to register for VAT (she could choose to register voluntarily, but she is not obliged to).
On £30,000 of profit, as a sole trader with no other income, her personal allowance of £12,570 for 2025/26 covers the first slice, so £17,430 is taxable. At the 20% basic rate that is income tax of £3,486 (gov.uk: income tax rates). She also pays Class 4 National Insurance at 6% on profits between the £12,570 lower profits limit and her £30,000 profit, which is 6% of £17,430, or £1,045.80 (gov.uk: self-employed National Insurance rates).
So Aisha's total bill from the WooCommerce business for 2025/26 is roughly £3,486 + £1,045.80 = £4,531.80, due by 31 January 2027. She, not a platform, is the one telling HMRC all of this.
If Aisha's turnover grew past £90,000 in a rolling 12 months, the story would gain a VAT chapter: register within 30 days of the month-end, reconfigure WooCommerce to charge 20% correctly, and file MTD VAT returns. The income tax and NIC duties would not go away, they would simply sit alongside VAT.
Frequently asked questions
Does WooCommerce automatically send my sales figures to HMRC?
No. WooCommerce is self-hosted software on your own site, not a marketplace operator, so it does not report anything to HMRC. The digital-platform reporting rules apply to operators who connect third-party sellers to buyers, and gov.uk confirms you are not in scope if you only sell your own goods through your own website. You declare your income yourself on your tax return.
I only made a few hundred pounds on my WooCommerce shop. Do I still report it?
If your gross trading income for the tax year is £1,000 or less, the trading allowance usually means you do not need to tell HMRC or file a return. Once it goes over £1,000 you need to register for Self Assessment and report it. Gross means your total takings before any costs.
Do I have to charge VAT on my WooCommerce store?
Only if you are VAT-registered. You must register once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period, or if you expect to pass it in the next 30 days. On a self-hosted store you then have to configure your plugin to charge the correct rate, because the software will not do it for you and will not warn you when you cross the threshold.
Is it different from selling on Amazon or eBay?
Yes. A marketplace can file a digital-platform report on you and can act as the "deemed supplier" for VAT on certain sales. On your own WooCommerce site there is no operator, so no report is filed and you account for all your own VAT and tax.
Can I claim my hosting and plugin costs against tax?
Generally yes. Ongoing running costs such as hosting, domain renewal, plugin and theme subscriptions and payment-gateway fees are normally allowable revenue expenses. A large one-off build of the website itself can be capital and is treated differently, so it is worth checking how a major spend should be handled.
Talk to an e-commerce accountant →
Key takeaways
- On a self-hosted WooCommerce site, nobody reports your sales to HMRC. You self-declare everything.
- The digital-platform reporting rules do not apply to you because you sell your own goods on your own site, not as a marketplace operator.
- Register for Self Assessment once gross trading income passes £1,000; register for VAT once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in a rolling 12 months.
- Your VAT is plugin-driven, so misconfiguration is a real risk. Check your tax settings before and after you cross the threshold.
- Most of your tech-stack running costs are deductible; a major site build can be capital.
Want a clear picture of what your store owes and when, across every channel you sell on? Talk to a Zmartly accountant about our ecommerce accounting support and we will set your reporting up properly from the start.
