Professional Seller Policy

Catawiki’s Online Marketplace is available for both private sellers as well as Professional Sellers. Being a Professional Seller means that you have additional obligations vis-a-vis Catawiki and our Buyers. Please carefully read our General Terms of Use and, more specifically, our Seller Terms to see what is expected from you as a Professional Seller. This Professional Seller Policy describes when you qualify as a Professional Seller and why this qualification is important to you and us. We’ve defined the capitalised terms used in this Professional Seller Policy in our General Terms of Use.

When are YOU a Professional Seller?

You are a Professional Seller if you sell objects in connection with your trade, business, craft, or professional activity. We maintain a set of criteria to determine whether you might be considered a Professional Seller by Catawiki’s standards. We could deem you a Professional Seller, if you;

• On a yearly basis offer up more than 250 objects for auction on our Online Marketplace; and/or
• On a yearly basis sell for an amount of €75,000 or more on our Online Marketplace; 

Please be informed that if you do not reach the above thresholds through selling on Catawiki’s Online Marketplace but also offer your goods up for sale or auction outside our Online Marketplace (or, for the avoidance of doubt, via multiple Accounts), you could still qualify as a Professional Seller.

You could also be considered a Professional Seller if you;

• Are trading over the legal thresholds defined by your home country and/or the buyer’s country to be considered a VAT taxable person; and/or
• Regularly put a large number of objects up for auction; and/or
• Regularly sell the same type of objects; and/or
• Regularly offer new objects that you have not manufactured for your own use; and/or
• Offer objects as an agent for other people; and/or
• Have certain technical information and/or expertise relating to the objects you offer which information or expertise our Buyers do not have; and/or
• Also buy objects on our Online Marketplace with the goal of reselling these objects; and/or
• Sell objects on our Online Marketplace which are connected to your commercial or professional activities; and/or
• Regularly sell objects which have about the same value; and/or
• Are enabled to engage in commercial activities through your legal and/or VAT status.

We ask you to make sure that if you meet one or more of the above criteria that you either (i) register as or (ii) change your status to that of a Professional Seller in your Account. It is your responsibility to keep your seller status actual in your Account Settings e.g. if you are selling as a private seller but you decide to register your business and/or increase your volume of sales we expect you to change your status to Professional Seller in your Account settings.

Catawiki may at any time also inform you that you qualify as a Professional Seller and ask you to change your seller status. We will always provide you with the opportunity to deliver proof of why you should not be considered a Professional Seller. 

Finally, please be aware that Catawiki will regularly perform independent (data) analyses to ensure that its sellers will comply with this Professional Seller Policy. As per our Seller Terms, non-compliance can lead to a warning or even a temporary or permanent block of your Account. Furthermore, Catawiki reserves the right to manually change your seller status in your Account(s).

What are your legal and tax obligations as a Professional Seller?

As a seller, irrespective if you are a private or a Professional Seller, you are always personally responsible for complying with the tax legislation and commercial laws in your country of residence and any other countries where you send your objects to or from. Professional Sellers are obliged to register with the details of their company, including, if available, a valid Chamber of Commerce and VAT number. At any time, we may ask for more information to substantiate that you are a Professional Seller, such as a company registration extract and tax registration certificate. 

Why is it important that YOU register your seller status truthfully?

(i) If you are a Professional Seller this means that you have certain obligations vis-a-vis our Buyers, for more information on this please carefully read the Seller Terms. 

(ii) If you are a Professional Seller, you will be deemed a VAT taxable person for VAT purposes and will be treated as such. This means that your sales could be subject to (e.g.) EU or UK VAT and you may be required to fulfill local compliance and registration obligations (and potentially charge and remit VAT) in respect of the objects you sell on our Online Marketplace.

Value Added Tax (VAT) is also known as Consumption Tax (CT), Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Sales Tax (HST, SST, PST, RST or QST) in some countries and regions.

(iii) Under EU, UK and local tax laws of other countries for some sales by Professional Sellers, Catawiki will be presumed the deemed supplier. This means that we (a) will need to take charge and collect and report certain VAT payments to the relevant tax authorities and (b) can - next to you - be held liable for misrepresented VAT.

(iv) Under the tax laws of certain countries we have reporting and bookkeeping obligations where we need to indicate if sales on our Online Marketplace are made by a VAT taxable person. If this data shows false information about your VAT status, tax authorities may choose to investigate you.

The above enumeration means that If you do not register yourself as a Professional Seller whilst you actually are, you are evading your VAT obligations and tax authorities can claim back this amount of misrepresented VAT and may impose penalties (and charge interest) in relation to the misrepresented VAT. 

If you want to know more about your VAT obligations, please read the Payment & Fees article in our Help Centre. If anything is unclear or you have questions we strongly advise you to contact your local tax advisor.

What happens if I am a Professional Seller but I register myself as a private seller?

Tax authorities may claim any misrepresented VAT for the objects you have sold and impose financial penalties. In some cases, as exemplified above, a tax authority may also direct such a claim towards Catawiki. You acknowledge that Catawiki will hold you fully responsible for the payment of such claims and penalties and any (future) payments to you can be suspended, set-off, withheld and/or reclaimed (through debt collection or otherwise) in accordance with our General Terms of Use.

What happens if I do not or cannot substantiate that I am a Professional Seller?

In case you do not provide information to substantiate that you are a Professional Seller and/or cannot provide a valid VAT number to prove you are a VAT taxable person, you shall be deemed a Private Seller for VAT purposes (i.e. the services rendered to you shall be categorised as B2C services), even if you declared to be a Professional Seller. Furthermore, Catawiki reserves the right to treat the services as B2C services for VAT purposes based on relevant facts and circumstances, even if you declare yourself to be a Professional Seller. 

Changes to our Professional Seller Policy

We may update this Professional Seller Policy from time to time. If we do so, we’ll post the updated version on our Online Marketplace. We’ll also let you know via email if an update significantly affects how you use our Online Marketplace. If there is any conflicting information between the English version of our Professional Seller Policy and any of the translations into other languages, the English version prevails.  

Contact

If you have questions about this Professional Seller Policy, you can always reach out to us using the below contact details or by contacting our Customer Experience team (“contact us” button below):

Catawiki B.V.
Sint Jorissteeg 2,
1012 XV Amsterdam
The Netherlands