Today I’m going to walk you through an easy way to find and compile all the data you need to know for your state sales tax forms regarding your Etsy shop.
When you set up shop on Etsy, you most likely need to apply for a sales tax permit or license with your state. You also should set up your Etsy shop to charge sales tax to your in-state customers. {If you haven’t taken the time to do these steps yet, I suggest you read my intro to sales tax post first.} You might breathe easy after getting those steps squared away, but what happens when it comes time to actually fill out that state sales tax form? Do you know where to find the info you need?
First thing’s first, I believe that when it comes to numbers and spreadsheets, it’s a lot easier toshow you how to do something than to type it all out. So, I’ve created a quick and easy video tutorial that walks you through the same steps that I’ve outlined before. For access to the video, just click here . If you’d rather read along and follow the screenshots, then just stay put!
Let’s go over the steps to finding your in-state sales totals and some other relevant info for your sales tax form. After logging into your Etsy shop account, you’ll just need to follow these steps:
- In your Shop Manager, navigate to “Settings” then “Options”.
- Click the “Download Data” tab.
- From the “Orders” box, select the “Orders” option from the dropdown menu (what type of CSV you’d like to download), and select the applicable month and year. If you leave the month dropdown menu blank, Etsy will give you all orders from the entire year you select.
- Click Download CSV.
- Open your newly downloaded file in the spreadsheet software of your choice. Excel is my preference, followed by Numbers or Open Office. If you don’t have either of these, you can open it in Google Sheets, which is web-based software that comes free with any Google account.
Now this is your “data mine” of info for your sales tax form. What exact data you need will depend on your state. But chances are at a minimum, you’ll need to know yourtotal in-state sales.
- Turn on filtering for your data – highlight row 1 (the header row with titles) by clicking on the “1” to the left of all your data. This will select the entire row and highlight it.
This shows row 1 once it’s been highlighted. Please excuse my horrid blurring of private customer info 🙂
- With the entire row highlighted, click the funnel button at the top of your spreadsheet software. If you don’t see the cute little funnel button, then you can navigate to the “Data” menu and select “Filter”. Once you have filtering turned on, you should see a little dropdown arrow on each column in row 1.
This shows the spreadsheet after filtering has successfully been turned on. You can tell the data can be filtered now because of those little dropdown arrows all along the top row header.
- Navigate to column M “Ship State”. Select the dropdown arrow on this column.
- Click the checkmark next to “Select All” to de-select all the states. Click the checkbox next to just your state to see sales for only in-state customers.
Now that I’ve got filtering turned on and set to TX, you can see that my spreadsheet shows me ONLY my TX sales for the month.
Viola!Now you are looking at just your in-state orders from Etsy. The next step isto figure out how to correctly total your in-state sales. To do this, you mustknow whether or not your state charges sales tax on shipping. Hopefully you already know this by now and have set up your shop to charge accordingly.
If your state does not chargesales tax on shipping…
Take the sum of your filtered column Q “Order Value”, less any discounts issued in columns T or U, less any refunds noted in columns AB, AC, and AD. Unfortunately, Etsy doesn’t directly statethe coupon amount and the refunded amount, so you may need to get your caclulator out and do a little number crunching.
Note that the easiest way to get the sum of afiltered column is to simply highlight the cells you’re trying to total, like so:
And then check out the bottom right-hand corner of Excel for an automatic total. Youdon’twant to use the “sum” formula on a filtered column of data, because it will include all the filtered out numbers that you can’t see and be incorrect (i.e., it will still total ALL your sales, and not just those in-state ones you’re looking at!).
So let’s just reiterate, my total in-state sales equals what’s in my filtered “Order Value” column. I may also need to take into account any discounts and/or refunds if applicable.
If your state charges sales tax on shipping…
You’ll want to do exactly the same steps as above, but make sure to add column V “Shipping” in your equation. You can sum this filtered column using the same method of highlighting.
Column W “Sales Tax” will tell you how much in sales tax you actually collected from your customers on Etsy. Hopefully this total ties to what you end up calculating on your sales tax form. Sometimes it’s off by a few cents due to rounding, and that’s ok. If it’s way off, then chances are you either didn’t set up Etsy to charge correctly, or you miscalculated something on your form. A few questions I’d consider if your numbers are very different:
- Did you forget to set up Etsy to charge sales tax on shipping?
- Have youchecked the “charge sales tax” box on all your listings?
- Did you set up Etsy to charge not just your state sales tax rate, but any applicable local, county, or city rates as well on top of the state rate?
- Do you have Etsy set up to charge sales tax toall in-state customers, and not just certain zip codes?
Note – Don’t accidentally include column W “Sales Tax” in your sales total! This would be like charging sales tax on your sales tax.
an example of the sales tax short form in texas
Update for 2018: Etsy reporting has gotten a bit wonky with the latest changes due to marketplace sales taxes. For the most part, it appears that Etsy is NOT including sales tax collected for marketplace states in column W (“sales tax”), but every now and then, I do see a rogue number for a marketplace state being reported here, even though you likely never received that money. Keep that in mind when examining this report.
Now your form might also ask for something like “gross sales”, “total sales”, or something similar. You will need to read the form’s instructions to determine exactly what this means. It usually is either your total in-state sales, or your total sales to ALL sources. If you need your total sales to ALL sources, you can get that info from your Etsy Orders CSV as well. I recommend using one of my Seller Spreadsheets to get that total quickly & easily.
I always recommend using this source for your sales tax forms (and your income taxes too), rather thanyour Etsy Stats page. Your Etsy Stats page gives you thesales totalfor a time period, but it’s not always correct. It doesn’t include shipping, for instance, if you need that amount included.
If you have sales OUTSIDE of Etsy,don’t forgetto add the applicable amounts to your sales tax form as well!
You may have to file your sales taxes monthly, quarterly, semiannually, or annually. Depending on your needs, you may need to download multiple CSV files from Etsy and add together your findings from several months. Make sure you jot down your work or calculations somewhere so you can have a record on file of exactly how you came up with the amounts on your sales tax form. Save your Etsy Order CSV files to your computer or cloud as well to have on record. Make a copy of your sales tax form before submitting.
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If this process has you totally overwhelmed or befuddled, you can check out theEtsy Seller Spreadsheet. You can simply copy & paste your entire Etsy Order CSV file into this tool, and it uses built-in formula to pull the sales tax amounts you need for your forms, without any extra work on your behalf. Save yourself some time, energy, and stress, and check it out here.
All information on this site is provided forgeneral education purposes onlyand may not reflect changes in federal or state laws. It is not intended to be relied upon as legal, accounting, or tax advice. We strongly encourage you to always consult with a tax or accounting professional about your specific situation before taking any action. Please readour full disclaimerregarding this topic.
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