It’s almost the start of income tax season, and if you have an Amazon FBA business like I do, you’ll need to collect the documents necessary to file your income taxes. Income taxes aren’t the most exciting topic, but it’s something you have to deal with every year, and collecting the necessary information is something you should know how to handle.
Today, I’m going to show you how to generate a one-page summary of your Amazon FBA sales, expenses, and deposits. This is an important document for filing your income taxes, so you’ll need it whether you have an accountant file taxes for you or you file them yourself.
This report is also an interesting summary of information that you don’t regularly see in your Amazon Seller Central account, so even if you sold very little in the last year, this is a set of numbers you’ll want to see.
I’ll also show you where to download your 1099K forms for the year for each marketplace, which are also needed to file your income taxes.
Let’s go through the steps of generating the summary first.
Steps to Generate a Year-End Summary
Starting on the Amazon Seller Central home page, hover over the menu icon in the upper left, and go down to “Payments”, and then click on “Reports Repository”:
This will bring up the Reports Repository page, with a section that looks like this:
The report you need doesn’t exist yet, so you need to enter the proper report parameters. Change the “Report Type” drop down to “Summary”. Then, enter the date range, which will be January 1st of the previous year to December 31st of that same year.
Once you’ve filled in these fields, click on the “Request Report” button:
When you click on “Request Report”, a line populates below with the status of your report generation request. Once the report is ready, it looks like this:
Click on “Download PDF”, and the box that pops up next asks if you want to open or save your report; choose whichever you prefer:
The report looks like the document below, although I’ve blocked out the numbers because this is my actual year-end summary, and I don’t want to share my numbers with the world:
Looking at the report, here is what each section is showing you:
- Income: this shows your Amazon FBA and any non-FBA sales for the year, with appropriate adjustments made for refunds, shipping, rebates, etc.
- Expenses: this lists the fees you pay as an FBA seller, with the three largest typically being “FBA selling fees”, “FBA transaction fees”, and “FBA inventory and inbound service fees”.
- Transfers: this shows the total amount Amazon deposits into your bank account for the year.
- Sales Tax: this summarizes the sales tax you and/or Amazon collected for the year.
With this report, you’ve got one of the documents needed to file your income taxes.
However, you’ll also want to download your 1099K forms for each marketplace you sell in. This is a bit easier than generating the custom sales report, but I’ll walk you through that process just in case you can’t find the forms.
Steps to Download Amazon 1099K Forms
Starting back at the Amazon Seller Central home page, hover over the menu icon in the upper left, and go down to “Reports”, and then click on “Tax Document Library”:
This will take you to a screen that looks like this:
To the far right, there is a button to the right to download the PDF of the 1099K form. Click on “Download PDF”:
You’ll get the same kind of download dialog box as before. Choose whether to save or open the file:
Now you’ve downloaded your 1099K form for the current tax year.
One thing to note: if you sell in multiple marketplaces, you’ll want to download the 1099K form for each marketplace. I currently sell in four marketplaces, so I need to download all four 1099K forms as listed below:
Now that you’ve got all the forms you need, you can file your taxes, which isn’t really that exciting, but it’s a necessary part of running a proper business.
Also, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, taxes can be a complex topic, and you should definitely seek the advice of a professional tax advisor to tell you how you should handle income, sales, or other taxes for your business.
Good luck with your Amazon FBA business in the year ahead!
Want to read about how my own Amazon business has evolved over the years? Read about it here. Wondering if you’re missing any tools that may make your business more efficient? Check this list here.