#e-commerce
Accounting solutions for online stores and e-commerce businesses
Starting July 8, 2026, the CPSC requires importers to eFile certificate-of-compliance data directly into CBP's ACE system for every regulated shipment, with violations risking penalties up to $120,500 per infraction.
Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) marks up foreign-card payments 3-7% above the interbank rate — sometimes 12-18% — and splits the revenue among DCC providers, acquirers, and merchants. Here is who profits, the Visa/Mastercard disclosure rules merchants must follow, and how to book DCC rebates and settlement variances separately from sales revenue.
Starting July 1, 2026, the EU replaces its €150 duty-free threshold with a flat €3-per-item customs duty on distance sales, so a three-item EU order with distinct HS codes can owe €9 in duty on top of VAT — here's what US sellers need to audit before the deadline.
Illinois eliminated its 200-transaction economic nexus threshold under HB 2755 effective January 1, 2026, leaving a single $100,000 revenue test and offering a limited amnesty window from August 1 to October 31, 2026 for unregistered remote sellers.
Inventory distortion costs retailers $1.77 trillion a year in stockouts and overstock, and multichannel sellers on Shopify, Amazon, and POS are especially exposed to sync lag, phantom inventory, and manual reconciliation errors—this guide covers real-time sync, cycle counts, and reorder-point formulas to fix it.
Print-on-demand sellers who are merchants of record (Shopify with Printful or Printify) owe sales tax themselves and can deduct real COGS, while royalty-based marketplace sellers (Redbubble, Amazon Merch, Etsy) owe no sales tax because the platform is a marketplace facilitator and have no deductible COGS at all.
Visa lowered its VAMP excessive-merchant threshold from 2.2% to 1.5% on April 1, 2026, with fines of $8 per flagged transaction, and Mastercard's Excessive Chargeback Program still triggers at 100+ monthly chargebacks — here's how the ratio math catches small merchants off guard and how to bring it back under the line.
Etsy raised its UK Regulatory Operating Fee from 0.32% to 0.48% on June 22, 2026, and starting August 11, 2026 requires AI-content and production-partner disclosure plus original designs for laser-cut, sublimation, and CNC products — here's the pricing formula and compliance checklist to handle both.
PCI DSS 4.0's transition period ended March 31, 2025, so every merchant assessment from 2026 onward now enforces mandatory payment-page script monitoring, MFA for all cardholder-data access, and authenticated internal vulnerability scans — noncompliance risks $5,000-$100,000 monthly fines from acquiring banks plus an average $173,692 added breach cost per IBM's research.
TikTok Shop's 1099-K reports unadjusted gross sales, not net payout — referral fees, payment processing charges, and affiliate commissions typically consume 30-45% of that total before it reaches a seller's bank account, and untracked fees can inflate taxable income.
The EU's Non-Union OSS scheme lets US freelancers and SaaS founders selling digital products to EU consumers file one quarterly VAT return instead of registering separately in all 27 member states.
Wardrobing and other return fraud account for roughly 10–15% of retail returns and cost U.S. retailers over $100 billion a year; reason-code tracking, customer-level return reports, and a monthly returns reserve are the bookkeeping controls that catch it before it erodes margin.
