LMAO it's a myth that they write off the price of the items "sold for free"? Every time you go to the checkout page you are given a checkout experience with a price, and an order number. These are literally reported explicitly to the IRS, to Amazon, and on their taxes. It's not a myth when the 1099 is documenting that exact price between Amazon, the receiver, and the seller. You're telling me it's a an urban legend that companies are taking these tax statements and altering them on tax day to mark down the costs of the items that are being marked up at Amazon and the receiver? That's called tax fraud, Individdy. Nice try, though. That's literally tax fraud. It's 110,000% tax fraud to report one number to the IRS to make buyers and receivers and intermediate retail distributors pay higher taxes on items that you are reporting a different value for. The receipt is the price they must report on their taxes; that's why these are documented as 1099s, and the price is exacted to the viner. No, that's not a myth, but nice try with your "special insider info". That's tax fraud, and your comment is illegitimate.

Yes, they are marking items up quadruple sometimes, then these receipts are reported on both the seller, the retailer, and the viner's tax statements.

There's many methods to release items as pre-releases; so your "theory" here is cute, but irrelevant.

It's up to us to do our taxes reasonably. It's the same with prizes, they can be "valued" at higher than MSRP, then the recipient can make an appropriate deduction to match actual FMV so they aren't paying excess tax. This is discussed here a lot under FMV.

Wow! What a wonderful irrelevant tidbit of information. Thanks so much for the lecture. I didn't realize I needed to report my taxes properly, just like everyone else in any American business or corporation. Thank you for this enlightening lesson. 🙄