Three numbers that look like one
When a customer hands you money for a lamp, it feels like one number: the amount in your hand. In your records, that amount is often hiding two or three different figures, and mixing them up is one of the most common ways a reseller’s numbers drift from the truth.
The three that matter most are:
- What the customer paid: the full amount that changed hands.
- Sales tax: the part of that amount charged as tax.
- Sales: what the customer paid for the goods themselves, without the sales tax.
There are other figures too, like shipping charged and fees taken by a platform, and they matter. But get these three straight first and most of the rest falls into place.
This article is general and educational, and US-focused. Sales tax rules vary by state and by how and where you sell. For your own situation, check with your state’s tax agency or a tax professional.
A worked example at a market table
Say you sell a mid-century table lamp at a weekend market. The tag says $40. You’re responsible for collecting sales tax at this market, and the local rate gives $3.20 of tax. The customer hands you $43.20.
- What the customer paid: $43.20
- Sales tax: $3.20
- Sales: $40.00
The mix-up happens when $43.20 goes into the records as “sales.” It feels harmless, but it’s wrong in a way that compounds. The $3.20 was never yours. It’s money you’re holding to pass on to the state. Count it as sales, and every total built from it, including your weekly sales, your average sale and any comparison to what you spent, is quietly too high.
Why sales tax is not your money
When you collect sales tax, you are acting as a collector. The customer pays it, and you are generally responsible for sending it on to the tax authority. In your records it’s a separate amount you owe onward, not income from selling.
That’s why the most useful habit is to record the sales tax as its own amount, every time, exactly as it was charged. Not estimated from a rate afterward. Not left for “later, when I do the taxes.” Rates differ by location, some items may be treated differently, and the amount on the receipt or register is the one that actually happened.
When someone else collects the tax
Many resellers sell in places where the platform handles sales tax for them. Many states require online marketplaces to collect and send sales tax on their sellers’ behalf once they pass certain thresholds, according to the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board, which also notes that each state’s own law governs. Some antique malls run the register and handle the tax for their vendors. Whether that applies to you depends on the platform, the state and your arrangement, so check the platform’s help pages or your vendor agreement.
When the platform collects, the customer still paid the tax. It just never reaches you as money to forward. Your payout or statement may show the tax, or leave it out entirely. Either way, it’s worth recording what the customer paid and the tax portion when the statement shows them. That keeps your sales figure honest, and it means you can explain the difference between what the buyer was charged and what you received.
The other figures in between
Between what the customer paid and what lands in your bank account, a few more things often come out:
- Shipping charged to the buyer. This is part of what they paid. Keep it visible, because what you spent on postage is a separate cost. Shipping charged isn’t sales tax, so it isn’t taken out of your sales.
- Platform and payment fees. Marketplace fees, payment processing and mall commissions are costs of selling. They reduce what you receive, but they don’t change what the customer paid.
- Discounts and offers. If you accepted $32 on a $40 tag, the sale is $32. Record what actually happened, not the tag.
A useful mental model is to start from the customer’s side: what they paid, and how much of that was tax. Then work toward your side: what came out for fees, and what you received. Keep each figure as its own line, so none of them gets silently netted into another.
Spending is a separate column
Sales tell you about money coming in. What you spent, on goods to resell, on materials like mailers and tags, and on other costs like booth rent, is a separate column, and it doesn’t line up neatly week to week. The sweaters bought this Tuesday may sell in March. This week’s sales may come from a box lot bought last year.
So putting this week’s sales next to this week’s spending doesn’t give you profit. Profit, in the useful sense, means comparing what an item sold for with what that item cost, plus a fair share of the costs of selling it. That takes a record of each item’s cost, kept from the day it was bought. Until you have that, the honest view is two columns side by side: what you spent and what customers paid. That’s still valuable. It just isn’t a profit figure, and it shouldn’t be read as one.
When a number is missing
The last trap is the missing number. Say you recorded a sale at a show but didn’t note the tax because the card reader receipt is in the van. If you leave that sale out of your totals, they’re too low. If you guess the tax, they may be wrong in a way you’ll never notice.
The honest approach is to keep the sale in and mark its tax as not yet known. What the customer paid is still known. The totals for sales and sales tax collected then say “at least” the amounts that can be counted, with a reason attached. When you find the receipt, complete the record and the total becomes exact. An unknown amount is not zero, and a good record never pretends it is.
A short checklist for every sale
- Record what the customer paid, in full.
- Record the sales tax as charged, separately, even when a platform collected it, if the statement shows it.
- Note where it sold and when.
- If anything is unknown, mark the record incomplete rather than estimating.
- Correct or void a sale that changed. Don’t delete it.
Where Sellers Almanac fits
Sellers Almanac records each Sale with what the customer paid and the sales tax exactly as you enter it. It never calculates the tax for you. Totals show Sales excluding sales tax beside What customers paid, and Sales and Sales tax collected say “at least” when a sale’s tax amount isn’t recorded, while What customers paid stays exact. Profit figures aren’t built: they depend on item-level cost, which comes with inventory items (in development). It is in founder testing on iPhone and not yet available to download. See how the Money totals work today.