#ecommerce
Online selling, ecommerce platforms, multi-channel retail, and digital storefront management
How to keep books for Notion-template sales when a merchant-of-record platform collects sales tax and nets fees from your payout—separating customer charges, platform fees, refunds, and taxes through a clearing account so a $1,530 deposit is fully explained, and treating Form 1099-K as a cross-check rather than your ledger.
Learn how small businesses should book customer refunds as contra-revenue, not expenses — covering Schedule C line 2, sales-tax payable reversals, inventory COGS adjustments, payment processor reconciliation, and ASC 606 refund liabilities with a monthly workflow to keep net sales accurate.
eBay's July 1, 2026 fee reform cuts final value fees to flat 5% for used and refurbished goods and raises new-goods fees to 7% for commercial sellers on selected marketplaces. Learn how the 5% vs 7% split changes reseller margins, why private sellers are unaffected, and how to reconcile gross 1099-K sales to net payouts without losing the fee deduction.
Shopify payouts are net settlements, not revenue — gross sales minus fees, refunds, reserve holds, and Capital remittances across a 1-3 day settlement window. This guide shows the clearing-account method to reconcile every payout, handle rolling reserves and Shopify Capital correctly, and match 1099-K gross to ledger sales.
ASC 606 treats a right of return as variable consideration, so an $80,000 sales month with a 9% historical return rate is $72,800 of net revenue, a $7,200 refund liability, and a recoverable-inventory asset — not $80,000 booked as final. This guide shows how to build a category-weighted reserve from 12 months of your own data, flag the 5 to 10% of buyers who generate 30 to 40% of returns, and apply graduated account limits that stay documented and defensible.
Amazon's 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge starts Apr 17 2026 on FBA US/CA and remote fulfillment, May 2 on Buy with Prime and MCF — 3.5% of fulfillment fees, ~$0.17/unit avg.
Sri Lanka now charges 18% VAT on digital services sold by non-resident providers once revenue exceeds LKR 36 million a year or LKR 9 million in a quarter, effective July 1, 2026, with quarterly filing and registration due within three months of crossing the threshold.
Effective January 1, 2026, Illinois eliminated the 200-transaction economic nexus threshold, leaving a single $100,000 trailing-12-month revenue test for remote sellers. Here's who gains or loses nexus, how the August–October 2026 amnesty program works, and how to structure your books to answer state-by-state sales questions on demand.
Print-on-demand sellers run two different businesses — integration channels (Etsy + Printify) with real COGS, and marketplace channels (Redbubble, Amazon Merch) with none. This guide covers how to reconcile 1099-K gross figures, avoid double-counting platform fees, handle marketplace-facilitator sales tax, and structure a per-channel chart of accounts to track margins that range from 20% to 70%.
Colorado's retail delivery fee rose to $0.31 per order on July 1, 2026, while Minnesota charges $0.50 on qualifying orders of $100 or more. Here are the exemption thresholds, marketplace carve-outs, the ten-plus states drafting similar fees, and how to record the fee so it doesn't tangle your books.
In June 2026, USTR concluded 60 simultaneous Section 301 investigations and proposed additional tariffs of 10% (economies with an unenforced forced-labor import ban, including Canada, Mexico, and the EU) or 12.5% (the 54 economies with no ban, including China, India, and Vietnam) — duties that stack on top of existing Section 232, IEEPA, and China 301 rates. Here is who is on each list, how the surcharge compounds landed cost, and five steps small importers should take before the final rate publishes.
Canada's GST/HST small-supplier exemption is based on worldwide taxable sales, not Canadian-only revenue, so a US seller with zero Canadian sales can already owe registration once global sales pass CA$30,000 in a quarter or over four trailing quarters.
