Ask HN: Amazon account is suspended and I lost all tax documents. What to do?

44 points by nathanh4903 3 years ago | 22 comments

My Amazon seller account got deactivated 5 months ago with no specified reason. Due to being busy with school and some health issues, I stopped selling this year and did not see this message. My account is now deleted, with "no way to access any information." All my tax documents, sale records and revenue info is gone. My fund is frozen with an appeal method that is ghosted (idk how much balance i have). Customer support told me to seek legal advise when doing tax return and wait for refund appeal

What can I do? I paid seller subscription which includes tax handling. Do I have a legal case to require them to send me my account data? Does Amazon actually delete account data in just 5 months?

edit: im willing to spend good effort and money to fight this corporate whim

sillysaurusx 3 years ago |

How much money do you think was in it? Are we talking hundreds, or thousands?

If it’s thousands, small claims court might be the way to go. It’s surprisingly effective, and also surprisingly painless.

For tens of thousands, hire a lawyer. I can help put you in touch with someone if you don’t know any.

If it’s hundreds, I’ll just Venmo it to you so you can mentally move on. Someone going to school and dealing with health issues shouldn’t have to also go through this.

jacquesm 3 years ago | |

> If it’s hundreds, I’ll just Venmo it to you so you can mentally move on.

very classy.

toomuchtodo 3 years ago | | |

[retracted comment about assuming positive intent and comment proposal being a reasonable course of action, my apologies for interpreting sarcasm where it did not exist]

crazygringo 3 years ago |

I swear there needs to be legislation on this kind of thing.

I understand that companies need to fight fraud and ban accounts and whatnot. They're not always in the right, but they're certainly not always in the wrong either, and they're private companies so I can respect that it's their decision.

But we need legislation that can't be overridden by TOS that:

1) Forces companies (like PayPal or Amazon here) to transfer all remaining funds to you via check, unless they actually go to the trouble of suing you for the funds in court to prove they were stolen/fraudulent/illegal/etc. It's your money unless a court says otherwise, end of story

2) Forces companies to give you full read-only access to your account rather than ban access or delete info completely, so you can retrieve records and communications (like in this case)

A long time ago I would have thought the free market would have resulted in these outcomes anyways, but that's clearly not the case. So why don't we have legislators fighting for these common-sense solutions?

Brian_K_White 3 years ago | |

No legislator ever faced this problem.

PreInternet01 3 years ago |

If your actual accounting information is truly and permanently gone, that's both a problem and an opportunity: you can't get it anymore, but neither can the tax authorities.

So, the next best thing you can do, is submit a best-faith declaration. I assume you still know how much you spent on source materials (in case you did physical sales), or approximately how many units at which price points you sold (for digital sales).

You then construct a Profit-and-Loss statement based on these best-faith assumptions, and go with that. It's quite unlikely the tax authorities will challenge you on this, unless Amazon happens to have communicated sales (and/or sales tax) amounts to them already.

If that is the case, and you best-faith declaration varies significantly from those reported amounts, you may face audits and/or fines. Prior to doing your tax filing, you may be able to obtain any pre-reported amounts from Amazon and/or the tax authorities: if you're going to spend any money on "fighting" this, I would invest it in a tax lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction to send the required requests.

However, also consider the monetary upside/downside of doing such. In many jurisdictions, fines for tax under-reporting are typically capped at 100% of the final tax amount. So, if you would owe, say US$ 5K according to your own calculations, and that actually turns out to be 10K, the maximum total damage (tax plus fine) you would realistically face would be around 20K. Then, see how much lawyering and anguish you would get for the difference...

jacquesm 3 years ago | |

> If your actual accounting information is truly and permanently gone, that's both a problem and an opportunity: you can't get it anymore, but neither can the tax authorities.

You can't get it anymore but Amazon may well have passed it on to the tax authorities. There also are the bank statements of the OP.

In no way is this an opportunity.

pc86 3 years ago | |

There is probably only 0.1% Amazon actually, permanently deleted any tax documents this quickly, and 0.0% chance they did so without sending them to the appropriate tax authorities first.

supriyo-biswas 3 years ago | |

There are legal obligations in most jurisdictions to maintain financial and taxation records for X amount of years, where typically X > 10, and severe fines for not complying with said laws.

While OP's account has been closed, this in no way means Amazon has got rid of these records. Their customer support is likely playing hardball since this is an atypical request with no escalation path.

bombcar 3 years ago |

The IRS won't care (much) but Amazon may have reported things to them, you can get copies of that from the IRS.

You may be able to work it backwards from the bank statements, and make some assumptions.

Document everything, if you get audited (unlikely) they'll understand, as long as you aren't trying to pull a fast one.

aurizon 3 years ago |

There are state and federal laws that govern record retention. Amazon MUST have internal records due to these laws. You need to ask, citing these laws, and they should comply.

pixl97 3 years ago | |

Yea, if Amazon is deleting tax information, whichever countries tax authority this occurred in would be very interested.

ilamont 3 years ago |

My Amazon seller account got deactivated 5 months ago with no specified reason.

Experienced Amazon Seller here. They always cite a reason for account termination, even if it's a ridiculous one, or one that's impossible to disprove ("we have reason to believe you are manipulating reviews of another account"). For non-fatal issues, Amazon often asks for a "Plan of Action" (POA) to have accounts reinstated.

You mentioned that you were out of action for 5 months. Did you check your notification history? Were you monitoring your seller metrics, FBM orders, feedback, and customer messages? If you don't respond to something like a customer message or a placed order that will definitely lead to problems up to and including account termination.

As for your specific issue - accessing tax records - seller forums indicate that you should still be able to log into the dashboard and access certain parts of the site. Can you do this? If so, have you attempted to file a support case for this issue?

kevingadd 3 years ago |

Have your accountant send them a letter, and then if that doesn't work, pay a lawyer to send them a letter.

pixl97 3 years ago | |

Not sure why you're downvoted, but yea, this is what you do.

PopAlongKid 3 years ago |

Are you asking about sales tax, income tax, or something else? U.S. or which country? Are there any bank records, shipping records, tax deposits, you can use to re-construct some or all of the needed data? (You need to figure out exactly which data you need).

nathanh4903 3 years ago | |

I don't have a record of my sales, which (I think) I need for sales tax and income tax. I operate and is tax resident in both Canada and USA.

>Are there any bank records, shipping records, tax deposits, you can use to re-construct some or all of the needed data

Thats what I'm trying to do now, collecting shipping and supply cost documents. However, with amazon's tax documents and sale spreasheet, I don't know how to do sales tax

realitysballs 3 years ago |

Before exerting a lot of effort/energy do a rough napkin-sketch calculation determine upper& lower bounds of tax burden / ramifications.

Only take efforts that are quality to or lesser than the tax burden and/or the risk/cost of not filing anything altogether.

nitwit005 3 years ago |

As to the tax documents, you can always call the IRS. Being unable to get documents is a fairly common issue.

blairanderson 3 years ago |

they'll send your 1099 at end of year.

ok123456 3 years ago | |

That doesn't help you if you need to submit quarterly payments.