Tax for teachers selling resources on Tes and Teachers Pay Teachers

How the marketplace money moves

The useful question is not simply, "How much did I withdraw?" It is, "What created the balance I withdrew?" A GBP 180 bank payment may be the result of several classroom-resource sales, a seasonal discount, a refund on a bundle, a small-price transaction fee and royalties credited over more than one month. A monthly payout can also arrive after the original sale date.

Create a seller bridge for each marketplace: opening seller balance; individual sales or the platform's monthly sales total; refunds and reversals; platform royalty, commission or fee; any tax amount identified in the report; closing balance; requested withdrawal or monthly payout; and the matching bank receipt. Retain the original export beside this summary. The summary is for you and your accountant; the export is the underlying evidence.

Do not make up a VAT treatment from the buyer's checkout price. Tes says it is the seller to the third-party buyer for a Tes resource sale and charges/remits VAT or GST where applicable. TPT's international terms and reports are not a substitute for UK advice. Keep the marketplace documentation and ask an accountant about VAT once the actual turnover, products, customer locations and contractual route make the question relevant.

A monthly seller routine that works around term time

1. Export before the dashboard changes. Download Tes sales detail and seller-balance evidence, plus TPT Sales Details and payout evidence, once a month even when sales are quiet.
2. Record the product rather than a vague payment. Use an item name or internal resource code such as "GCSE biology retrieval bundle", not "Tes money". Keep the transaction ID from the platform.
3. Separate discounts and refunds. A back-to-school promotion, a refunded resource and a chargeback are not invisible just because the eventual bank receipt is smaller.
4. Match balances to bank money. Record payout date, payout processor reference, original currency if shown and bank receipt. Leave timing differences visible instead of forcing the month to balance.
5. File creation and selling costs. Keep receipts for costs that genuinely relate to creating, licensing, hosting, marketing or selling your resources. The connection to this income matters; school employment costs and resource-sales costs are not automatically the same claim.

This routine avoids a January panic while retaining enough detail for an accountant to understand royalties, promotions and the difference between a marketplace balance and cash received.

Three teacher-resource examples

• Secondary maths teacher on Tes: a GBP 4 algebra workbook sells repeatedly, some copies are discounted and one sale is refunded. The teacher exports the sales rows, retains the transaction identifiers and tracks the royalty credited, then matches a GBP 10-plus withdrawal to the bank. The resource receipts sit apart from the school's monthly PAYE payslip.
• Primary teacher using TPT: a phonics bundle makes sales in US dollars. The seller keeps the Sales Details Report, the membership or payout-rate evidence that applied, the currency shown by TPT and the Hyperwallet payout record. A bank-credit amount in pounds is a reconciliation endpoint, not the only income record.
• Teacher with Tes, TPT and direct school licences: the marketplaces supply reports, but a local school buys a departmental licence directly. The teacher keeps a direct invoice and payment record for the school sale rather than trying to put it through the marketplace worksheet. The accountant can see three distinct routes without double counting any of them.

Common mistakes

Do not call the whole marketplace checkout price your income when the statement identifies a different royalty or platform role. Do not record only a monthly withdrawal and discard the sales report. Do not quietly omit refunds, promotions or foreign-currency detail because they are inconvenient. And do not combine a salary paid by a school with resource sales simply because both originate from teaching.

Another common mistake is treating a small or irregular resource income as too minor to record. The relevant question is the tax-year position, not whether a marketplace payment felt like "just coffee money". The trading-income allowance is useful context, not a reason to ignore sales records or assume one answer fits every income source.

Questions to take to an accountant

• For Tes and TPT, should I start from the gross sale, the royalty credited or another field in the current seller report?
• How should discounts, refunds, marketplace fees, membership fees and payout timing be reflected in my records?
• Can I use the trading allowance, or would actual resource-creation expenses be more appropriate for my facts?
• How should I record direct school licences beside marketplace resource sales?
• Does the marketplace arrangement, customer location or my turnover create a VAT question I should address?
• Which costs are properly connected to selling resources rather than to my separate PAYE teaching job?

Useful related guides