I think that is an excellent strategy. Some of the Vine products I receive never work or fully function. I delete those from income as damaged goods. As for whether Amazon would ever adjust a tax form, not on your life! They derive benefit from getting us to write reviews in exchange for 'free' products. I imagine they treat it as a business expense. If so, it would make sense for them to use the estimated value in the write-off. On the other hand, I'd be curious if the Amazon tax folks place a value on our reviews. There's no guaranty an Amazon Vine review truly moves the needle when someone contemplates ordering a product, so most reviews may well be worthless for tax (and other - wink!) purposes. Along that line, it's too bad Amazon has eliminated from our profile pages the info about how many likes our reviews have collected.
Regardless, we can be sure that whatever Amazon does maximizes the company's benefit irrespective of how much actual benefit accrues to Viners. That's simply standard business practice.
Ken
