Beyond the cost of the stock itself, allowable costs typically include marketplace and payment processing fees (Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, PayPal, Stripe all take a cut, and that cut is a deductible expense), packaging and postage, storage costs (including Amazon FBA fees), software subscriptions for your store or accounting, advertising and sponsored listings, and a reasonable proportion of home costs if you're running the business from home.
Many online sellers under-claim on platform and processing fees specifically, because they're often deducted automatically from your payout before the money reaches your bank account, making them easy to overlook when you're totting up expenses from your bank statements rather than from the platform's own sales reports. Photography, props, and packaging design costs for your listings are deductible too, which sellers sometimes assume falls under a vague "marketing" category they haven't been claiming properly. If you're calculating your expenses purely from your bank statement rather than reconciling against what each platform actually reports as fees taken, you're probably missing legitimate costs.
We reconcile against what each platform actually reports as fees taken, so you're not missing legitimate costs.
Talk to an AccountantBeyond the cost of the stock itself, allowable costs typically include marketplace and payment processing fees (Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, PayPal, Stripe all take a cut, and that cut is a deductible expense), packaging and postage, storage costs (including Amazon FBA fees), software subscriptions for your store or accounting, advertising and sponsored listings, and a reasonable proportion of home costs if you're running the business from home.