Where do I expense shipping costs and fees for selling things on eBay or other ecommerce sites?

[wilyry]

For Example if eBay says I made 100k a year, but $17k of that was eBay fees that they took, and another 4k was shipping fees. Where would the 17k and 4k be expensed?

[KrisD15]

If you are filing schedule C, those would be business expenses. 

If the sales were personal items, the treatment would be a bit different, but if the 1099-K is really reporting 100,000, that sounds like a business. 

[wilyry]

It is a business, essentially just a SP as I'm just selling as a hobby after I lost my job.  The hard part to decide on is which of TurboTax many Categories these would fall under?  They have so many starting with:

Startup costs

Home office

Communications

Office expenses

Equipment rental

There are so many categories, I just need a simple way to say X $ of that 100k was Fees taken by eBay, and X $ was how much it cost to buy shipping labels through eBay to ship everything.  It seems overly complicated for a simple ecommerce side gig.  Thank you for your help!

[KrisD15 · Accepted solution]

If this is the first year you're entering the 1099-K directly on the Schedule C screen, you can have a miscellaneous expense (or several) and name it something like "Shipping on 1099-K" Or "Selling fees on 1099-K".

If you decide to do this, do this the same way year after year, the IRS likes consistency.