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Updated October 27, 2026. General information, not tax advice.
Amazon purchases are deductible when they are ordinary and necessary for your business: office supplies, shipping materials, work equipment, software and work-related books are the usual ones. To find them, export your full order history into a spreadsheet, tag each item as business, mixed or personal, then group the business items by Schedule C line.
Keep the itemized export with your tax files. A bank statement shows you paid Amazon, but only the order record shows what you bought.
Your deductions are already in your order history
Export every Amazon, Walmart and Target order into one spreadsheet.
If you're self-employed, a good chunk of your business spending probably happens on Amazon, Walmart and Target. Printer ink, a new webcam, cables, packaging, an office chair, books for a course you're building. It adds up fast.
The problem is that those purchases sit in the same order list as groceries, birthday gifts and household restocks. At tax time most people either skip them or spend a weekend scrolling through hundreds of orders trying to remember what was what.
Every business purchase you miss raises your tax bill twice: once through income tax and again through self-employment tax, which is up to 15.3 percent of your net business profit. This guide shows how to find those purchases, what usually counts, and how to keep records that hold up if the IRS asks.
The IRS lets self-employed people deduct expenses that are both ordinary (common in your line of work) and necessary (helpful and appropriate for your business). Sole proprietors, freelancers and single member LLCs report them on Schedule C. These are the categories that show up most often in online order history:
| Purchase type | Amazon examples | Usual Schedule C line |
|---|---|---|
| Office supplies | Paper, pens, ink, toner, folders, notebooks | Line 18, Office expense |
| Software and small tech | Apps, keyboards, webcams, microphones, hard drives, cables | Line 18, Office expense |
| Supplies used in the work | Boxes, mailers, tape, labels, craft or cleaning supplies, photography props | Line 22, Supplies |
| Books and education | Books and courses that maintain or improve skills for the work you do now | Line 27a, Other expenses |
| Furniture and larger equipment | Desks, chairs, monitors, laptops, cameras | Line 18 or 22 if expensed under the $2,500 rule, Line 13 if depreciated or written off under Section 179 |
| Inventory for resale | Products you buy to resell on eBay, Etsy or Amazon | Cost of goods sold (Part III), not an expense line |
Two rules trip people up. First, mixed-use items like a phone or laptop you also use personally are deductible only for the business-use percentage, so note how you split them. Second, furniture and equipment are deductible based on how much you use them for business, which is a separate question from the home office deduction. The home office deduction itself only applies to a space used regularly and exclusively for business.
Education only counts when it maintains or improves skills for the work you already do. Courses that qualify you for a new line of work aren't deductible. And if you're a W-2 employee rather than self-employed, unreimbursed work purchases aren't deductible on your federal return (K-12 teachers are the main exception), so ask your employer about reimbursement instead.
Most small businesses can elect the IRS de minimis safe harbor, which lets you expense items costing up to $2,500 per item or invoice instead of depreciating them. You make the election each year with a statement attached to your return. Larger equipment can often still be written off in the first year through Section 179 or bonus depreciation. A tax professional can tell you which approach fits your situation.
You can't categorize what you can't see. Amazon's Your Orders page shows a handful of orders at a time and has no download button. Amazon retired its Order History Reports CSV in 2023, and the replacement, Request Your Data in your account privacy settings, can take days to arrive and comes as a raw archive rather than a tax-ready spreadsheet. Walmart, Target and Temu have similar limits.
You have two options:
Once everything is in one list, tag each item with one of three labels:
Searching the item names speeds this up. Try terms like ink, toner, paper, label, mailer, tape, cable, adapter, webcam, microphone, tripod, notebook, planner plus anything specific to your trade. You'll also spot patterns: the same ink cartridge every two months, recurring shipping supplies, a cluster of purchases around a big client project.
Sorting by price is the other shortcut. The few large purchases usually matter more to your tax bill than the long tail of $6 items.
Your tax software or accountant will want business expenses grouped the way Schedule C groups them: office expense, supplies, equipment, other expenses and so on. Grouping as you tag saves a second pass. Our Schedule C guide for online shoppers explains which line each purchase type belongs on.
Hundreds of Amazon orders to tag?
The Purchase Categorizer marks each item business, personal or mixed and puts it on a Schedule C line for you to review.
For each business expense you want to be able to show what you bought, when, from whom, how much you paid and why it was for the business. An itemized order export covers the first four. Add a short business purpose note for anything that could look personal at first glance, like a lamp or a pair of headphones.
The IRS generally asks you to keep supporting records for at least three years after you file. Some cases need longer: six years if income was underreported by more than 25 percent, and for equipment you depreciate, until the limitation period ends for the year you sell or dispose of it. Save the export with that year's tax files.
Your online order history already holds most of the records you need. The hard part is getting it out and sorted. Do that once and finding your deductions goes from a weekend chore to an afternoon task. If you want a rough number before you start, the Tax Deduction Estimator gives a ballpark from your yearly spend.
Amazon purchases are tax deductible when they are ordinary and necessary expenses of a business you run, such as office supplies, shipping materials, work equipment or books that keep your current skills up to date. Personal and household purchases are not deductible. Self-employed people report the business ones on Schedule C.
Export your full Amazon order history into a spreadsheet with item names, dates and amounts, then tag each item as business, mixed or personal. Searching the export for words like ink, toner, cable, mailer, label, microphone and book surfaces most business items quickly.
Usually not on its own. A bank line that says AMAZON MKTPL $84.21 proves you paid, but not what you bought. The IRS expects records that show the date, the seller, the amount and a description of the item, which is what an itemized Amazon order record gives you.
Yes, but only the business-use percentage. If a laptop is used 60 percent for work, you deduct 60 percent of the cost. Keep a short note of how you estimated the split.
Amazon generally charges when each shipment leaves the warehouse, so a single order split into several shipments can appear as several smaller charges. Matching on order ID instead of on the card charge avoids double counting or missing items.
Export your Amazon, Walmart, Target and Temu orders into one spreadsheet, then sort them for tax time.
Export my order historyThis article is for general information only and is not tax, legal or financial advice. Tax rules change and the right treatment depends on your situation. Before you file or act on anything here, talk to a licensed tax professional, such as a CPA or IRS enrolled agent.