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yes, I agree it is an open Forum however the name of the forum 'Car Dealer' kind of gives it away! You are also right, if you are paying your taxes and dues , looking after your customers, preparing the cars you sell to the highest standard ,'treating customers fairly' offering them the highest customer care at all times , ensuring that you repair cars if they come back with a problem and running your 'part time' business under the Consumer Rights regulations, and hold down a full time job, then congratulations you are a better man than me! In my personal view 'commitment' is exactly that, ensuring that you do what you need to do to make it work for you and your employees and customers, after all they are the reason you are in business! A bit like 'marriage' which is another commitment, you make sure that you love, support and do the best for your spouse, all the time(full time) , because successful marriages don't have another part time wife on the side. As I said at the beginning this post was not to offend but to vent my views and yes it was down to the chat openly admitting he was not vat registered on here, which unless he can clarify on the forum why he needs even more stock when he (in your words) only sells a couple of cars a year is beyond me!

I've done three in the last month and make them pay as we send them off, at least that way you have the money in the bank to re stock (space allowing). also the v5 comes back in their name ie their car so they should pay at that point.

Wind your neck in a tad fella, to answer your questions, i trade enough units to stay under the vat threshold and that's how it will stay for the time being, and yes I completely understand how the margin scheme works.

He buys them off roadside traders I met him there when I was stocking up keep it quiet 3 today here, couple of finance declines who I could place sub prime but the payments were to high. Loads of test drive time wasters who have just come out and first question can I drive it, we have 6 more to look at.

I've got a part time wife , but the full time one don't know about her.

Your comment "I've made sure I'm as legal as I need to be" certainly sums everything up in a nutshell! I wish you all the best in your continued success, it's maybe us in the trade that are doing things wrong! But trust me Reggaj 'jealousy' certainly doesn't come into it! We are all different and all allowed to have our own opinion even if these differ, that is what makes these Forums interesting! I will never agree fully with how you trade and obviously you feel the trade are all unscrupulous when you get to a certain size , that's cool, but there is an open invitation to meet up to discuss this face to face at our premises, genuine offer, then we can show you what we do and all the regulation that we have to adhere to along with the costs, then you may understand why your thread has irritated some on here. Thanks again, Jim

Skmotors what you really wanted to say in your original post was, hi I flog motors from my drive while working full time, but I really want to know where "proper" traders source their cars from as I'm not making enough profit in these cars that I'm buying as they are accessible to all the chancers out there, and these chancers are pushing up the prices by bidding ridiculous amounts for cars with little profit in them

Reggaj it sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it to me, and niether yourself or skmotors have answered the questions how many cars do you sell and how do you keep under the threshold? Ive sold 2 range rovers and a Prius this month alone, another few months of that and if I wa a fresh business then tell me how I would avoid paying Vat and margin do you even know how the margin scheme works ?

The guy asked a question on an open forum, a home trader, sells cars with a warranty, stays under the vat threshold, and pays his taxes etc from that income, also has a full time job and pays his his taxes and ni contributions from that I would imagine, Just a thought, but could he maybe only sell a couple of cars a year and keep his full time job that he may earn a decent wage from.... Don't really see what the issue with him is, I trade from home part time , pay my due taxes and dont pay vat because I've never hit the threshold or want to volunteer for it, absolutely nothing illegal about it, as for "having to commit to the trade to be part of it" at the moment I earn a decent wage doing what I do so won't be giving it up just yet...

Non retail cars .... They go on gumtree, they are mot'd and road legal and sold with a warranty. VAT and home traders, well if your not going to hit the VAT threshold then why would you want to go through the pain in becoming VAT registered. i've collected a couple of cars this last week and most of them have given up on trade to retail and become trade to trade. So far I've only come across one person pretending to be private but actually being a trader. I didn't buy it and walked away. as for me and my background, I started off with a mechanical apprenticeship then 6 years mechanical engineering followed by a move into purchasing with an engineering company, then staying in purchasing but moving to a charity and managing the warehouse and returns as well as the fleet. i love cars, always have and for the last 9 months I've been working in the car trade, be that cleaning, selling, paperwork, viewing and collecting across the uk to painting and decorating our new lockup. There are two of us and even though it's not my business I treat it exactly as if it was. So for me never being in the trade it helps reading about and being able to ask questions and receiving helpful advice from others that have grown up in the trade.

Just as a matter of interest how many cars do you sell per week, per month, per year? As I would love to know how you manage to keep under the VAT levels! Stock is hard to source for us all and even harder to make a living for most when you are paying margin vat on your profit. Im my humble opinion Auctions should only ever allow VAT registered traders into their sales anyway, or they could run two levels of sales the first time they run through the cream cars of the auction then for the cars that don't sell through that vat registered sale they can then go back through the ring allowing non- vat registered traders and public to bid each other up, sounds fair to me, what do you think?

No that's not what I mean< i'm the first in the queue to help anyone with anything if I think I can , however when we have someone on the Forum who openly admits that they are not a VAT registered dealer dealing with £10k cars , please tell me how that works, so there we have it, I've been 30 years in the trade the last 13 years on my own and now have 12 employees and if someone can tell me how I can pay no vat (legally) please fire away.........but I won'y hold my breath! The point I was trying to make is this, Auctions shouldn't dictate to the Dealers it should be the other way round, however now they are so big they have complete control , taking more and more profit opportunity away from each of us by pushing up prices by inviting everyone and their dog in to purchase cars. Getting stock has always been hard and now getting harder but unless you are a VAT registered trader with a traders licence , let that be trade to trade or trade to retail , these are the ONLY people who should be allowed to trade and gain info in forums like this. As I already said, I'm happy to take on a mentoring role as I already do with anyone who wants to make this industry their business , living and career, but if you are 'in it to wing it' move on!