E-Commerce
The Deposit Is Not the Revenue
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The deposit that lands in your bank account on Tuesday is not Tuesday's revenue. It is gross sales less platform fees, less refunds, less chargebacks, often covering orders placed across several days. Book that number as revenue and the books are wrong from that entry forward, along with every margin and tax estimate that depends on them.
CPA Gurus is an accounting firm working with online sellers. Four things usually need sorting, and they tend to arrive in this order.
Settlement, not deposit
The work starts with the settlement report from each channel. Gross sales, fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserves are separated into their own accounts, and the net is tied to the deposit that actually cleared the bank. That discipline turns a bank feed into books you can decide from, and it is the only way a margin figure means anything.
Inventory and cost of goods sold
Once revenue is stated correctly, cost of goods sold can be too. Inventory is where most e-commerce books come apart: purchases expensed as they are paid for, freight-in ignored, and no link between units on the shelf and dollars on the balance sheet.
Smaller businesses are excused from the complex inventory-capitalization rules known as UNICAP and may use simplified inventory accounting instead. Eligibility rests on average gross receipts over the prior three years measured against a ceiling that rises with inflation, so it is worth rechecking each year rather than assuming last year's answer still holds.
Sales tax in more than one state
Every state sets its own economic nexus test and they do not agree with each other. New Jersey's is either more than $100,000 of receipts delivered into the state or 200 or more separate transactions, in the current or prior calendar year (New Jersey Division of Taxation). Other states require both tests to be met rather than either one, and the measurement periods differ too. Crossing one state's threshold tells you nothing about the next one, which is why we assess it state by state against each state's own current guidance rather than from a table.
Marketplace facilitator rules add a layer. Platforms such as Amazon and Etsy are generally required to collect and remit sales tax on the sales they facilitate. That does not cover your own website or your in-store sales, and it does not always excuse you from registering for your direct sales.
The forms at year end
Form 1099-K is the reconciliation that catches sellers out. Platforms report gross settlement, not net, so fees, refunds and chargebacks have to be separated out or revenue and cost of goods sold are both wrong at once (IRS: Understanding your Form 1099-K).
Contractor reporting moved recently and the threshold is now inflation-adjusted, so the figure depends on the payment year rather than on what you remember from last January (IRS: About Form 1099-NEC). We check it against the year being filed. None of that changes the wisdom of collecting a W-9 from every vendor regardless of amount, and you cannot collect one in January from a vendor who has stopped answering email.
On equipment, 100% bonus depreciation is permanent for property acquired after 19 January 2025. Many states do not follow it and cap section 179 expensing well below the federal limit, so one purchase can produce two different answers.
Common questions
Do I have to register for sales tax in every state I ship to?
No. Registration follows nexus, and nexus follows each state's own test, so the answer is a list of states rather than a yes or a no. We assess it state by state, tell you where you have crossed, and register you where you need it.
The marketplace collects sales tax for me. Am I done?
Not necessarily. Facilitator rules generally cover the sales the platform facilitates, not your own website or your in-store sales, and in some states you still register even where the platform remits. It depends on your channel mix, which is one of the first things we look at.
My books are just the bank feed. How bad is that?
Common, and fixable. It usually means revenue is understated by fees and refunds, and that cost of goods sold has never been tied to inventory. We rebuild from the settlement reports and quote the clean-up as its own fixed-price piece of work, separate from the ongoing bookkeeping.
This page is about whether we recognize your situation. The current numbers are deliberately not on it: state nexus thresholds, the contractor reporting figure and the small-business inventory ceiling all move, and a service page that restates them goes stale quietly. We work from each authority's own current guidance and check it against the year being filed.