Amazon Seller Fees in India Explained (2026): Where Your Money Actually Goes

Referral fees, closing fees, Easy Ship slabs, TCS, TDS — a plain-language breakdown of every charge on your Amazon settlement, and how to find out which products actually make you money.

By Autobac Team — Editorial Team · July 12, 2026

Every month, lakhs of Indian sellers open their Amazon settlement report and feel the same confusion: sales look great, but the payout is far smaller than expected. The gap is not a mistake — it is a stack of fees that most sellers have never fully mapped. This guide explains every charge in plain language, so you know exactly where your money goes.

The Four Fees on Every Order

Referral fee is Amazon's commission — a percentage of your item price that varies by category, from around 2% for some electronics accessories to 15%+ for many lifestyle categories. This is usually the single biggest deduction.

Closing fee is a fixed amount per item based on the price slab. It looks small — but on a ₹199 product, a flat closing fee can be a meaningful slice of the margin.

Shipping fee depends on how you fulfil. Easy Ship charges by weight slab, while FBA charges weight-handling plus storage. Heavier or bulkier items move into pricier slabs quickly, and many sellers underestimate their volumetric weight.

GST on fees — Amazon charges 18% GST on its fees. You can claim this back as input credit if you are GST registered, but it still affects your cash flow month to month.

The Two Deductions That Come Back

TCS (Tax Collected at Source) is collected under GST on your sales through the marketplace. TDS under section 194-O is deducted on gross sales. Both are recoverable when you file your GST and income tax returns — they are not costs, but they do reduce the cash you receive today. Track them separately so you actually claim them.

Returns: The Silent Margin Killer

A sale is not final until the return window closes. When a customer returns a product, Amazon reverses your product payment and most fees — but shipping is often lost, and the product may come back unsellable. RTO (courier could not deliver) behaves differently from a customer return. If your return rate is above 10%, returns may be costing you more than your advertising.

Most sellers price their products off the MRP and a rough "Amazon takes 30%" guess. The sellers who win price off a real per-SKU payout table.

How to See Your True Per-Product Profit

The data is all in Seller Central — in the Custom Unified Transaction report — but it is nearly unreadable by hand: shipping rows carry no SKU, refunds appear weeks after the sale, and ad spend sits in separate rows entirely.

This is exactly why we built free tools for sellers. Our Amazon fee calculator estimates your fees before you price a product, and its Payment Report analyzer reads your actual settlement file and shows per-product, per-period profit — including which orders lost money. We built the same for Flipkart and Meesho sellers.

The Bottom Line

Amazon's fees are not unfair — they are simply layered and easy to misjudge. Sellers who map every fee to every SKU price correctly, cut loss-makers early, and grow profitably. Sellers who don't end up celebrating sales while their bank balance shrinks.

If you want help auditing your marketplace account — fees, returns, pricing, and listings — talk to Autobac. We have turned loss-making accounts profitable by starting with the numbers, not the ads.

_Updated July 2026._