Guide
1099-K on Etsy, Amazon and eBay: why the forms never match your deposits
Sell on Etsy, Amazon and eBay and you'll get forms that seem to describe different businesses. They don't — they describe the same business through different gross figures.
What each form actually counts
All three forms report gross payment volume for the year: the full amount buyers paid, before refunds, before the sales tax each marketplace collected and remitted to states on your behalf, and before the fees that were taken out before your payout. Your deposits, by contrast, are what's left after all of that. The gap isn't an error — it's four different adjustments stacked on top of each other.
The usual suspects, platform by platform
Refunds. A sale refunded in February still sits in the gross if it was paid in January. Both platforms' summaries break refunds out — match them against the form, per platform.
Marketplace-collected sales tax. In most states, Etsy, Amazon and eBay collect sales tax from buyers and remit it themselves. That tax money is inside the gross figure but was never yours and never reached your account. For many sellers this is the single biggest line in the reconciliation.
Fees. Listing, referral, and transaction fees reduce your payout, not the gross. List them as a memo for your expense records; don't subtract them in the reconciliation.
Timing. A payment processed on December 31 may settle in January. Small year-end differences are usually timing, and your annual summaries show them.
Timing differences: the gap that can never match on its own
One adjustment deserves its own section, because it's the one sellers chase the longest: the 1099-K and your bank account count the same sale in different years.
A 1099-K counts a transaction in the year the transaction occurred. A bank payout counts when the money settles. Those are usually a few days apart — invisible in June, decisive in December. Take a $1,000 transaction on December 31: the 1099-K counts it in the current year, because that's when the sale happened. But if the payout reaches your bank on January 3, your bank records count it in the next year.
Nothing is wrong in either set of books — they're answering "when did it happen?" and "when did it arrive?" respectively. But it means the two sets of books can never match without this adjustment: at every year-end, the form includes late-December sales your bank hasn't seen yet, and excludes the early-January settlements that belonged to last year's form. The fix is not to force one set of books to agree with the other, but to name the difference: list the transactions that crossed the year boundary, in which direction, and for how much. Do that, and a difference that looked like missing money becomes a timing line in the reconciliation.
Which forms you'll receive
Federally, a marketplace must issue a 1099-K when gross payments exceed $20,000 AND 200 transactions (One Big Beautiful Bill Act; IRS IR-2025-107). Some states are lower — Massachusetts, Virginia, and the District of Columbia use $600, and Illinois uses $1,000 with 4 or more transactions — so a form can arrive for state purposes below the federal line. State rules change, so confirm the current threshold with your state tax authority. Different platforms crossing different thresholds is one more reason the stack of forms never looks consistent.
And eBay? Same gross, its own wrinkles
eBay sellers get the same gross-figure problem with a few twists of their own. Since eBay moved sellers to managed payments, eBay itself is the platform that pays you — and the one that issues your 1099-K when you cross the thresholds — so the form covers your total sales volume for the year, not what reached your bank.
Platform totals vs. payouts. Your eBay 1099-K gross is the full amount buyers paid. Your payouts are what's left after final value fees, promoted-listing charges, shipping labels bought through eBay, and any holds. Reconcile the form against eBay's annual sales and payments reports in Seller Hub the same way as the other platforms: start from the gross, then walk it down.
Refunds. Buyer returns and cancelled orders are inside the gross figure even though the money went back. eBay's reports break refunds out — subtract them in the reconciliation, per platform, just like Etsy and Amazon.
Fees are a memo, again. Final value fees and other selling fees explain why your payout is smaller than your sales; they do not explain the gap between the 1099-K gross and your sales records, because the gross was calculated before fees. Total them separately as a memo line for your expense records — never subtract them in the reconciliation itself.
Platform-collected sales tax. As a marketplace facilitator, eBay collects sales tax from buyers in most states and remits it to the states itself. That tax sits inside your gross figure but was never your money and never reached your payout — for many eBay sellers it's one of the biggest single lines in the walk from gross to reconciled total.
Overlap with processor forms. If some of your eBay sales were settled through a separate payment processor — older arrangements, or off-eBay sales paid through PayPal or Stripe — the same sales can appear on both an eBay 1099-K and a processor 1099-K. Before combining totals, check which sales each form actually covers and exclude any that were reported twice, documenting why.
Putting them together
Reconcile Etsy on its own, then Amazon, then eBay, then combine — checking first that no sales were reported on two forms. Our multiple-1099-K guide walks the full method, and the sample report shows the finished format with clearly fictional numbers. Or have 1099-K Reconcile do the walks for you — see pricing for what's included in the $49 report.
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Not tax advice. This guide is general information about how these forms are compiled, not tax, legal, or accounting advice. Verify current thresholds at IRS.gov and consult a qualified tax professional about your situation.