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How does Shopkeeper show Marketplace Facilitator Tax?
How does Shopkeeper show Marketplace Facilitator Tax?
Michael avatar
Written by Michael
Updated over a week ago

Marketplace Facilitator Tax

Marketplace Facilitator Tax is also called MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Principal, MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Total Tax.

Marketplace Facilitator Tax is a tax collected & remitted by Amazon on your behalf, due to agreements with the specific states in USA. Eventually all states will have such agreements and sales tax will be collected & remitted for you automatically in all of USA. 

You don't have to do anything, and there is no extra cost to you. But Marketplace Facilitator Tax will show up in your Seller Central transactions, so you need to understand what they are:

There is a bit of grey area in how Amazon sellers currently handle sales tax in those USA states that do not have agreements with Amazon. Here is a video explaining it:

In short, you are liable to collect sales tax in any USA state where your business has a nexus. Having inventory in a state is one way to be considered having a nexus. And as you know, Amazon stores your inventory all over USA, so you have nexus in basically all of the states. 

That means you are in fact liable to register for remitting sales tax in each state in USA. 

Most sellers are not collecting sales tax in all states. It's huge overhead and extra costs to register and do remittances, which often would be higher costs  than actual sales tax collected. So most sellers now are just standing in a 'grey area', waiting for Marketplace Facilitator Agreements between Amazon and all the states to be signed.

Here is an up-to-date list of agreements with the states that are currently signed by Amazon:

Shopkeeper will normalize your revenue, so that collected tax does not leave you with inflated revenue. Amazon inflates your revenue by showing collected tax as income, and tax chargeback as expenses. You don't want to appear as if you're making more money when you aren't:

There are other kinds of Marketplace Facilitator Tax Chargebacks: that you may see in your transactions:

MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Shipping
MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Other
MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-RestockingFee

MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Shipping is a chargeback on the Shipping Tax, which Amazon collects and remits on your behalf.  It is also called Facilitator Shipping Tax Chargeback.

Here is an example Amazon order you would see via Shopkeeper:

Normally you are the one liable for Shipping Tax - meaning you are the one who has to remit it, EVEN if Amazon is the one doing the shipping. But in this case, the buyer is from one of the states that has automatic tax collection / facilitator agreement with Amazon, so Amazon does not send you the Shipping tax as they normally would - instead, they are keeping it and will remit it on your behalf.

MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Other is any other type of tax chargeback, which Amazon collects and remits on your behalf. For example, Amazon collects Gift Wrap Tax for you. Then, in the same transaction, you see MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-Other amount:

As you see, it is starting to get quite messy and confusing if you try to analyze Seller Central numbers via Order page.

Shopkeeper displays it more organized and does not inflate your revenue with items that have chargebacks in the same Amazon Order:

MarketplaceFacilitatorTax-RestockingFee appears in Refunds, which have Restocking Fees. 

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