Ask an accountant: Etsy and makers
The questions Etsy sellers and makers actually ask, answered the way they would be answered on a call: the short answer first, then why, then the free tool if there is one. Rates are those applying in 2026/27.
11 questions, answered plainly
Only below 10,000 dollars of sales in a rolling year. Once your shop passes that, participation is compulsory for the lifetime of the shop and stays compulsory even if sales fall back below it. So the question is not whether to advertise but whether your prices survive a 12 per cent charge on attributed orders.
Because two of the charges are flat. The listing fee and part of the payment processing do not care what you sold it for, so they are a fifth of a small order and a fiftieth of a large one. On cheap items the flat 40p does more damage than every percentage put together.
Only if it does not hold your VAT number. Etsy bills UK sellers from Ireland, so a registered seller who has given Etsy their number is charged no VAT on fees at all under the reverse charge. An unregistered seller is charged 20 per cent and cannot recover it, which makes the fee bill a sixth dearer.
Not with a multiplier on your materials, because a multiplier cannot see how long something takes. Work out materials including waste, add your overheads per item, add the hours at a rate you would accept, then check what the platform takes. The uncomfortable part is usually the hours.
There are two break-evens and most people only work out the first. The items that cover the stall, the travel and your day, and the much larger number that beats having sold the same stock online. The second is often three times the first, because a fair is nearly all fixed cost and a listing is nearly all variable.
By batch. Take what the batch of materials cost, divide by the good items that came out of it rather than by the ones you started, and you have a cost per item that carries the scrap. Dividing by the ones you made understates it by whatever your failure rate is.
Three things, and most makers count one. Raw materials you have not used, work in progress that is started but not finished, and finished goods that are made but unsold. All three are assets at your year end, and counting only the finished shelf understates your closing stock and therefore overstates your cost of sales.
Probably not because of them alone. Etsy is the deemed supplier on digital downloads to consumers and accounts for the VAT itself. Selling the same files from your own website is a different matter entirely, because then the supply is yours and cross-border sales to consumers carry no threshold at all.
Less into making than you think. On a typical logged month, making is around half the week and the rest is photography, listings, packing, messages, bookkeeping and social media. Which means an hourly rate based on bench time alone is roughly double what your week really pays you.
You can normally take the whole cost against your profit in the year you buy it, under the Annual Investment Allowance, up to £1,000,000 a year. That makes the timing worth thinking about: buying before your year end brings the whole relief a year earlier.
Either a flat rate by hours, which is £10 a month for 25 to 50 hours and £26 for 101 or more, or the actual running costs apportioned by space and time. If you run a kiln or a compressor the actual method is usually worth a great deal more, because the flat rate has no idea what you are plugged into.
No question matches that. Try a shorter word, or ask us directly and it gets added.
Looking for something more general? Anything that applies to selling online anywhere, rather than to Etsy or to making things by hand, lives on the main question bank so this page stays Etsy and maker specific rather than repeating it.
Your question is not here? Send it over. This page is built from what sellers actually ask, so a missing question is a gap worth knowing about, and you get an answer either way.