As tax time approaches, we at Seller Accountant start to get messages from our clients about their Amazon tax documents. If you’ve ever checked on your Amazon 1099, you may have noticed that Amazon’s data doesn’t exactly match your P&L – but why?
Preparing to File Taxes
When prepping to file your taxes, you’ll need to grab copies of your tax documents from each of your sales channels to hand over to your CPA. Amazon’s Seller Central dashboard does provide a 1099K, but sellers tend to panic when they realize that their P&L is showing different sales data than Amazon’s tax documents.
We asked our COO Ashley Carter to explain the discrepancy:
Adjusted Gross vs. Unadjusted Gross
“The 1099 from Amazon is an unadjusted gross figure that includes Product Sales (non-FBA), FBA Product Sales, Shipping Credits, Gift Wrap Credits, Promotional Rebates, Sales Tax Collected, and Marketplace Facilitator Tax. Sales Tax Collected and Marketplace Facilitator Tax go onto the Balance Sheet as a liability, which is why they are not on the P&L to match with the 1099K. The other items are represented on the P&L in various accounts to give you the best visibility into your business.
“Rather than reconcile against the 1099 with unadjusted gross figures, Seller Accountant reconciles against Amazon’s finalized settlement statement, which allows us to reconcile the exact Amazon sales data against the cash deposit while still splitting the revenue into the correct month.”
In other words, Seller Accountant uses an adjusted gross amount to reconcile Amazon sales, and Amazon uses an unadjusted amount. When they factor in your other tax documents and your Balance Sheet, your CPA will be able to reconcile all of your sales income for the year.
Work With Us
If you’ve got more questions for Ashley and the rest of our expert team, you can book a paid coaching call here. If you’re ready to clean up your books in preparation for tax filing, contact us for a free 15-minute discovery call.