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

• kevingadd 3y ago
  Have your accountant send them a letter, and then if that doesn't work, pay a lawyer to send them a letter.
  • pixl97 3y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted, but yea, this is what you do.
• bombcar 3y 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.
• PopAlongKid 3y 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 3y 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
• aurizon 3y 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 3y ago
    Yea, if Amazon is deleting tax information, whichever countries tax authority this occurred in would be very interested.
• realitysballs 3y 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.
• sillysaurusx 3y 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 3y ago
    > If it’s hundreds, I’ll just Venmo it to you so you can mentally move on. very classy.
    • toomuchtodo 3y 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]
      • jacquesm 3y ago
        It definitely wasn't sarcasm. Sillysaurus and I go back a long time and I think their generosity is a very nice thing to see.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
• PreInternet01 3y 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 3y 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.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • pc86 3y 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.
• blairanderson 3y ago
  they'll send your 1099 at end of year.
  • ok123456 3y ago
    That doesn't help you if you need to submit quarterly payments.
• crazygringo 3y 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 3y ago
    No legislator ever faced this problem.
• nitwit005 3y ago
  As to the tax documents, you can always call the IRS. Being unable to get documents is a fairly common issue.
• ilamont 3y 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?