At Staxxer, we regularly speak with our own experts. We sat down with Jeffrey, our e-commerce accountant, and asked him about the bookkeeping pitfalls he encounters with e-commerce entrepreneurs. He didn’t need to think long: the Amazon bookkeeping mistake related to recoverable VAT. A mistake that’s easy to make, but with major financial consequences. In this article, we explain exactly what Jeffrey means, how things can go wrong, why it so often goes undetected, and what you can do to prevent it yourself.
The monthly statement is not an invoice
When we ask Jeffrey how this problem arises, he immediately points to Amazon’s monthly statement. Many entrepreneurs submit this statement monthly to their accountant as the basis for their administration. Understandable, as it shows everything: your sales, fees for commissions, fulfillment and advertising, and the amount transferred to your account.
But here lies the problem: this statement shows no VAT. As a result, an accountant has no idea whether input VAT can be reclaimed, so it regularly falls through the cracks. The VAT disappears into the costs and is never reclaimed. This can add up from a few hundred euros to thousands, or even tens of thousands.
When the mistake really costs you money
Amazon charges Dutch VAT on most invoices. As a Dutch entrepreneur, you can reclaim this in your VAT return, but only if your accountant has the right documents. The invoices are not in the monthly statement, but in the Tax Document Library in Amazon Seller Central. Depending on your volume, this involves dozens to hundreds of invoices per month that entrepreneurs often don’t forward, simply because they don’t know where they are or forget to retrieve them.
Jeffrey illustrates this with an example: suppose you pay €5,000 per month in Amazon fees. Those invoices include 21% VAT, so €1,050 that you as an entrepreneur can reclaim. If this never happens, it means you’re leaving €1,050 in recoverable VAT on the table every month. Added up over a year, that’s more than €12,000 that could have been legally recovered.
That’s exactly why Jeffrey always directly compares VAT returns with the official Amazon invoices for a new client. If the VAT reclaim is missing, the immediate question is: how far back does this go?
Why this goes wrong so often
The mistake can’t be attributed to one party. Both the entrepreneur and the accountant play a part in the story.
Most accountants are not e-commerce specialists. They don’t know Amazon Seller Central and don’t understand how the platform builds invoices. If a client submits a monthly statement with the note “these are my Amazon costs,” the accountant books it. That’s not carelessness, Jeffrey emphasizes, but simply the result of missing knowledge. They don’t know that behind that statement lie dozens of individual invoices.
The entrepreneur, on the other hand, may know that invoices exist, but doesn’t understand the bookkeeping consequences and trusts the accountant.
“It’s not about bad intentions. Someone who has never seen Amazon Seller Central from the inside doesn’t know what they’re missing. And the entrepreneur often doesn’t know either. That’s the combination that causes mistakes.” – Jeffrey
How to prevent this
The solution is simpler than you think, but you need to know where to look. In the Tax Document Library in Amazon Seller Central, you’ll find all individual invoices for your fees per month, including the VAT information that an accountant needs for correct processing.
A good first check is to ask yourself: how does my accountant process my Amazon costs? Based on the monthly statement, or do the official invoices come along? If the former is the case, there’s a good chance you’re leaving VAT on the table every month.
The solution is to retrieve those invoices every month and forward them to your accountant. Sounds simple, but in practice it’s a lot of work that quickly falls by the wayside. At Staxxer, we handle this automatically for you, so you don’t have to think about it anymore.
Don’t leave money on the table
The Amazon bookkeeping mistake related to recoverable VAT is one that easily goes unnoticed, not because someone is careless, but because specific knowledge of e-commerce accounting is lacking. Are you unsure whether your bookkeeping is correct on this point? We know the platforms inside and out and ensure that mistakes like these don’t go unnoticed. We’d love to have a conversation with you.
