Liquidate or Take Donations of Your Excess FBA Inventory

The core tradeoff

Liquidation routes inventory to a contracted liquidator who pays roughly 5-10% of the item's average selling price as a gross recovery value, before Amazon deducts its liquidations referral fee (15%) and a processing fee. Donations provide no direct cash recovery — instead, eligible inventory goes to a designated US nonprofit partner, and you receive a donation certificate that may be usable for a tax write-off. The two programs' fee structures haven't changed; what changed is which one you default into.

Donations became mandatory, liquidation became the default

Effective September 30, 2025, two things happened at once for US and Canadian sellers:

• FBA Donations became mandatory for eligible unsellable, returned, or overstock inventory — the opt-out option was removed entirely, and accounts that had previously opted out were automatically re-enrolled.
• FBA Liquidations became the default removal method for inventory that isn't donation-eligible, replacing whatever your prior default (such as disposal) had been.

How donations actually work

Donating is technically a routing option within Amazon's standard disposal process, not a separate zero-cost path — Amazon's own language is that "usual donation/disposal fees apply." When you submit a disposal request, eligible inventory is offered to a designated US nonprofit partner rather than destroyed.

Not every item qualifies for donation. Amazon's list of ineligible categories includes: certain hazardous materials, prohibited or restricted items, recalled products, items with built-in storage (such as electronics with memory chips), counterfeit goods, items with safety hazards, and anything else judged unfit for donation. Ineligible items are disposed of through the normal process instead of being donated.

All US FBA sellers are automatically enrolled by default. If you want to avoid having inventory donated, you have to actively choose a different removal method (liquidation or return-to-seller) — simply doing nothing means eligible inventory gets donated.

Getting your donation certificate

Donation certificates are generated annually and available by February 1 of the following year in the Donation Certificates section of Seller Central. The certificate is issued by Amazon's nonprofit partner on behalf of the receiving charity — it is not a tax document from Amazon itself, and its accuracy depends on the Business address information you have on file in Seller Central; errors caused by incorrect account information cannot be reissued.

On tax questions specifically, Amazon's own guidance is direct: Amazon does not provide tax advice to sellers who take part in FBA Donations, and recommends contacting your own tax adviser. There's no published figure for exactly how much a donation write-off is worth relative to a liquidation payout — that comparison depends on your own tax situation, so it's worth running the numbers with an advisor rather than assuming one option is automatically better.

A UI detail worth knowing

In Seller Central, the donation option is labeled "Dispose" or "Donate/Recycle" rather than a plain "Donate" button — a genuine point of confusion, since it's easy to assume you're selecting destruction when you're actually opting into the donation program.

Can donated inventory be reimbursed?

No. Amazon's FAQ lists three reasons inventory ends up donated: your automated removal settings are set to dispose/donate, you manually created a removal order and chose dispose, or the inventory had already been reimbursed under Amazon's FBA Inventory Reimbursement policy and Amazon has discretion to dispose of it afterward.

A practical scheduling tip

Rather than waiting for inventory to age into a forced removal, Amazon's own guidance suggests setting a fixed donation cadence — for example, twice a month — from the Removals page in Seller Central, so unwanted stock is cleared proactively instead of accumulating storage and surcharge costs first.