That's more of an accounting question than a tax question. If you simply record the net revenue, then your accounting is similar, but you don't have an easy way of checking to see what discounts you are offering and to which clients. If you enter the list price and then book the discount as a separate line item, you can do some financial analysis later, such as
- Which customers get the largest discounts?
- Do the discounts result in new, un-discounted business, or are you just losing sales?
- Do some clients get too many discounts?
- If everyone gets a discount, maybe you should just lower your list prices (nah).
(Think about laundry detergent. P&G makes cheaper laundry detergent (Era) and expensive laundry detergents (Tide) that (supposedly) have premium ingredients and work better. Then, they offer coupons, which allows further price sorting among their customers. (For example, the customer who wants the best and can afford it without wasting time to clip coupons, versus the customer who wishes they could have the best so they are willing to spend the time to clip, sort and use coupons, versus the customer who is willing to settle for the lower priced product. I imagine P&G learns quite a lot about the detergent market based on sales of different products and rates of coupon use under different economic conditions.)
Tracking your discounts gives you additional information about your business and customers, if you will use that data.
