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what's up guys Ryan here today I wanted
to make a video talking about how to
file taxes for your Amazon business I
also had to account for income from Etsy
and eBay so I also talked about those
two platforms and I include how to
expense your inventory if you did
print-on-demand sales on Amazon Etsy or
eBay using printful or gear bubble
because those are the main platforms
that I talked about using and that I use
myself let's get into it real quick I
thought I'd mention that I use Intuit
TurboTax to file my taxes every year if
you guys are watching this video and
it's your first time having to account
for additional income and maybe filing
your own taxes
check out TurboTax they make it really
easy to do and they walk you through
like what's going on on each screen you
can click learn more and it'll pop up a
helped prompt that if you're you know
inquisitive like I am and you want to
kind of know what's going on in each
screen it's a great way to learn let's
get straight into the Beast
amazon.com this is where the majority of
you guys watching this probably did most
of your online sales myself included
they'll send you a 1099 k document in
the mail telling you how much money you
made over the fiscal year and this is
what they're also going to report to the
IRS so when you're filing your taxes you
need to key in the same numbers from
that 1099 k you don't want discrepancies
there because that's gonna raise a red
flag you know use your use your head
here think about it from the IRS
perspective they have to streamline this
massive process for detecting like tax
fraud and whatnot and if there's
discrepancies between what a company
like Amazon reported paying you and what
you reported being paid by Amazon
obviously this gonna cause an issue so
that number obviously is not a hundred
percent profit Amazon doesn't know what
we paid for inventory and shipping and
etc we need to account for certain
metrics now if you go to my blog I put
links to where you can go grab all the
reports you need for you know all the
common reports you need to account for
your Amazon expenses now you can also I
mean Amazon's got tons of random
programs that sellers can opt into that
you'll end up paying them more money
like the early reviewer program so I
didn't account for things like that if
you use those things you need to
for your own expenses if you want to
save money while you're filing taxes
obviously expense them because they are
business expenses but what I've listed
here are the common expenses that almost
every seller is going to have used at
some point throughout the year the first
one is you can view your Amazon fees
meaning how much order fees did you pay
Amazon in order to sell on their
platform on the average order if you
guys are selling on Amazon you know this
they take around 15% as like a baseline
that's that's like the minimum you're
gonna want to know exactly how much you
paid Amazon in order fees for the year
so you can go to the reports tab in
seller central payments and then all
statements and then from there look for
the Amazon fees total column you can
also click this link on my blog and
it'll take you straight there
then you need to view your Amazon PPC
data from your campaign manager now I
just released a video about how I manage
my Amazon advertising campaigns a couple
days ago I suggest you check it out if
you're selling on Amazon and you're
trying to scale your business because I
put a lot of value into that video
talking about how to structure your
campaigns and your ad groups and I also
suggested some software that I use
myself for automating things like your
keyword management keyword bids target a
cos et cetera so you're gonna want to
grab your PPC spend from campaign
manager by going to reports and then
advertising reports if you're using AMS
you're gonna want to pull this
information whether you're selling on
Amazon seller central or maybe you're an
Amazon merger and you were trying to
account for your expenses on merch which
are so easy to account for because you
either advertised or you didn't if you
didn't advertise merch is pure profit so
there's nothing to expense if you did
advertise this is where you would
account for it go into AMS you're gonna
have to key in your AMS ID which you can
grab from the URL when you go to AMS
amazon.com but I put the link here that
you can click again you're just gonna
need to put your AMS ID in there and
then you can pull the report then you're
gonna want to account for your Amazon
coupons and lightning deals now some of
you guys maybe didn't use these if
you're not using them please take my
advice give it a test give it a shot
it's better to in my opinion like
mark up the cost of your product by 5%
and then run a coupon for 5% off because
you will stand out in search results by
having that little five percent off
coupon icon next to your product
especially if your competitors aren't
running coupons if you ran any Amazon
coupons click this link right here and
grab the report for what you spent
you can click expired and then look at
the date range now it's going to lump
together dates from this year last year
in the year before right so you have to
look at the specific dates one thing I
didn't mention when you pull these
reports guys make sure you have the date
range set to the correct fiscal year
same thing goes for lightning deals go
there go to the recently ended tab and
look at your lightning deals that have
expired look at how much they cost you
write those numbers down and then
obviously the other thing you cannot
forget to account for are your inventory
costs and inbound shipping now that's
not found in seller central only you
know what those are so hopefully you've
been writing them down as you've been
buying inventory throughout the year
I always pay by wire transfer and I keep
a big stack of wire transfer receipts
which actually have a picture of on my
blog that I'll show you
I like rubberband a big stack of them
together and I keep them according to
the fiscal year and I write down all the
important information like I'll fold
them up and then I'll just write down
the important information on the outside
of them so I can sift through them
really quickly
order number supplier date and how much
I paid so you're gonna need to add all
those up to get your cost of inventory
and then you're gonna need to add up all
of your I don't know how you pay for
your shipping I also just pay by wire
transfer to my freight forwarder add up
all your shipping costs deduct this from
the number that Amazon paid you and then
you have your profit
now guys I use some software called
fetcher and there's a link in the
description if you want to test it out
it'll generate your profit and loss
statement for your Amazon business for
you automatically because it integrates
with your seller account via API and it
can pull all the reports automatically
the only two reports it doesn't account
for are Amazon coupons and Amazon
lightning deals but the rest it can
figure out also if you're doing Amazon
marketing AMS that exists as an
independent arm of Amazon so it won't
pull that either because that's a
completely
Britta count but you can go into fetcher
and they give you like a 30 something
day free trial without even giving them
a credit card and then on the navigation
go down to P&L statement well actually
first you're going to need to click the
expenses tab and you're going to need to
tell them your cost of inventory for
each product and your inbound shipping
for each product as I just mentioned
there's no way for anybody to know how
much you're paying for inventory or your
shipping other than you so you're going
to need to factor that in manually
regardless of if you use fetcher or not
if you use fetcher you just click that
expenses tab key in how much you're
paying per product and then move on so
once it knows your product costs and
inbound shipping costs you can go down
to the P&L statement and it will split
up all your information by revenue it'll
give you your sales refunds
reimbursements and promos and there's
like a date range up to one year which
is perfect if you're doing taxes due
January 1st through December 31st and
your Amazon expenses so this should
sound familiar cost of goods inbound
shipping re shipping recurring fees
order fees and PPC from campaign manager
and then ultimately it'll spit out some
massive chart like this this was mine
for 2018 and this is basically all the
information I needed for my taxes
obviously like I mentioned I had to go
also grab my amazon coupons my lightning
deals and my AMS spent and factor that
in and deduct that from the profit as
well beyond that that's pretty much what
you need and it's done for you if you
sign up for fetch accom link is in the
description I highly recommend Fetzer
I've also done a fetch your review post
on my website it's great it's $19 a
month best $19 month that I spend it
helps me stay on track with my inventory
reorders I love it alright and last as
promised I also included in my write up
how you can pull the reports necessary
if you're selling on other platforms
including Etsy and eBay and fulfilling
your orders via either printful or gear
bubble so starting with Etsy they're
amazing they put all the information you
need in a single dashboard called fees
and taxes so you literally click the
link and if you're logged in you just oh
yeah I guess you'll have to set the date
range
to account for the year that you're
filing taxes for but then it gives you a
breakdown all in one screen of
everything you need so your listing fees
marketing fees shipping labels and
transaction fees just like that
so you'll deduct that from the 1099 that
Etsy sent you along with your product
costs which you'll pull from either gear
bubble or printful or whatever
print-on-demand service you're using
I'll show you your bubble and printful
in a second
next I have eBay so unlike Etsy eBay has
a single screen that has a drop-down
that you see pictured here where you can
select on a month-to-month basis your
transaction breakdown what I did is I
just grabbed the number and added them
all up I'm a web developer so I went
into my developer console grabbed the
HTML and then just chopped off the name
of the month and kept the transaction
amounts and then I put them in Excel and
just did a sum on them but you can also
just do it manually
whatever whatever floats your boat
whatever works for you last we need to
go into our print-on-demand production
partner and pull reports to see how much
money we paid them to produce design and
ship our orders to our customers so
starting with printful which if you're
new to my channel printful is my
recommended and favorite print on demand
platform at face value it may look like
they're pricier than some of their
competitors but trust me charge your
customers flat rate for shipping and use
print Foles dynamic shipping to fulfill
your orders to customers I've made a
separate video about it you can
basically upgrade your customers
shipping to one two three day DHL
Express it's only gonna cost you
probably three dollars and fifty cents
if you're charging flat rate shipping of
about five dollars fifty cents you keep
a two dollar profit and you shoot your
customer message hey we upgraded your
shipping just let them know tell me you
did it for free they'll love it they'll
give you good reviews you make extra
money everybody wins it's a separate
video check it out on my channel moving
on this is where you pull the report to
see your expenses on printful I put a
link to it in my blog but they just
added this dashboard in 2019 just in
time for tax season I'm so happy they
did so the column that matters most to
us is the fulfillment column the rest
you can pretty much ignore for tax
purposes the fulfillment column shows us
the
aggregate of what we paid printful it
includes things like digitization fees
taxes collected the raw cost of the
product and shipping costs to get it to
our customer so the rest of this
dashboard don't be confused fulfillment
is the column that represents our
expenses paid to printful the rest
though like the profit column remember
that's not your true profit because it
doesn't account for fees that we paid to
the e-commerce website where we got the
sale like Amazon has their own fees eBay
has their own fees Etsy has their own
fees etc you may see a fulfillment
column discount if you sell a lot
printful will give you what they call
volume discounts the following month
which is a great perk to using printful
if you're selling really well and then
the sales shipping verse fulfillment
shipping columns sales shipping is what
you collected what you charge from your
customer fulfillment shipping what it
actually cost you to ship it to them so
as you can see here from my screenshot I
have a nice little cushion there and I
made an extra three thousand three
hundred dollars give or take by charging
flat rate and then using dynamic
shipping to fulfill orders so like I
said pro tip you should be doing that
next let's go down here to gear bubble
and if you follow the link on my blog
they have a single page dashboard you
set the date range to the fiscal year
your reporting taxes for and it just
gives you the number chances are your
graph is going to look similar to mine
where you're gonna see a big spike in
the fourth quarter because that's when
print-on-demand sales tend to take off
but overall it will give you in the
middle of that big blue circle the
amount that you paid them last year so
you pretty much deduct that as your
product costs remember also don't forget
to deduct fees that you paid the
e-commerce platforms where these sales
took place although with gear bubble it
functions as its own marketplace so if
you're a baller and you're actually
getting sales through gear bubble calm
which outside of the founder I don't
know anybody else that's really doing
that but Don Wilson the guy who is in
charge of your bubble who as far as I
know built it from the ground up he
claims he runs Facebook Ads to your
bubble pages and gets sales I've never
heard of anybody else doing that
successfully but if you do when you're
watching my video drop me a comment I'd
love to learn from you anyways guys
thanks for checking out this video if
you liked it please subscribe hit the
like button and drop me a comment let me
know
if you have any feedback I'd love to
hear from you thanks for checking it out
and I'll see you at the next one
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