Published for ECOM CPA — May 2026
Two shifts in the last 90 days have made every ecommerce operating model written in January obsolete. If you have not redone the math, the next four weeks are a good time to do it, before the June 16 estimated tax decision and the July inventory commitment for back-to-school and Q4.
Shift one: the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February. Some of the duties you have been paying since 2025 may be refundable. Some are not, because Section 232 and Section 301 are still in force. The pricing you set in January is probably wrong in both directions depending on the SKU.
Shift two: the Fed has signaled a path toward 3.125% by year end, with the market pricing in two more 25-basis-point cuts before December. If you are carrying Shopify Capital, a Wayflyer advance, an MCA, or an SBA-7(a) at 11%+, the refinance math has flipped.
Here is how I would walk through the reforecast with a client this week.
Tariff posture: figure out your refund position
The February 20 Supreme Court ruling held that IEEPA does not authorize the kind of broad tariffs the prior administration imposed in 2025. Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs are unaffected. The administration replaced most IEEPA tariffs with Section 122 emergency tariffs that are lower and capped at 150 days.
If you paid duties under the IEEPA programs, your customs broker should be filing protective claims (Post Summary Corrections or 1520(d) requests, depending on entry date) to preserve your refund rights while Customs sorts out the refund mechanics. The Court of International Trade has been issuing guidance, but the operational picture is still fuzzy. Flexport, ImportGenius, and most large brokers have form letters ready. If you have not heard from yours, ask this week.
On your P&L, do not book a tariff refund as receivable yet. The IRS treats these as gain in the year received, not the year paid, so you do not get to restate Q1 cost of goods sold. But you should track potential refundable duties as a memo line so you know what kind of cash recovery is in the pipeline.
On pricing: if a SKU’s landed cost dropped because the IEEPA component went away, leave the retail price where it is for now and bank the margin. The Section 232 reset is volatile, and the administration has signaled it could reinstate tariffs under different authority. A $4 cost decline today could be a $5 cost increase in August. Do not give the margin back to the customer until you know it is durable.
Debt and working capital: the refinance window may be opening
If the Fed funds rate moves from 4.25% to 3.125% by December, that pulls SBA-7(a) rates down to roughly 8% to 9% range, depending on Prime spreads. Bank lines of credit follow. Even some asset-based lenders are repricing. The implication: the all-in cost of bank debt is heading back below the implicit cost of most ecommerce financing products.
Run the numbers on what you are paying right now. A Shopify Capital advance with a 1.13 factor over six months works out to roughly 26% APR when you annualize. A Wayflyer term loan at 1.10 over four months is around 30%. An MCA at 1.30 over five months is north of 70%. Compare those to a bank line at 8.5% with a 1% origination fee, and the gap is enormous.
The catch is qualification. Banks underwrite to two-year trailing EBITDA and personal guarantees. If you grew through 2025 and your last full year shows a clean profit, you may qualify for a bank product you could not have gotten in 2024. If you are still loss-making or your 2025 was choppy from tariff disruption, you probably do not, and the high-cost ecommerce options stay relevant.
Here is the reforecast question: if you refinance a $200,000 Shopify Capital balance into a bank line at 9%, your interest cost drops from roughly $52,000 annualized to $18,000. That $34,000 a year is real margin. Worth a couple of weeks of conversations with a regional bank.
The inventory bet for Q3 and Q4
Most sellers I work with place their back-to-school commitments in late May and their Q4 inventory commitments in June or July. The tariff shift complicates that decision in two ways.
First, the landed cost on your reorder may be different than the landed cost on the units sitting in your warehouse from January. If you weighted-average COGS, this is going to look messy on your P&L starting in July. If you specific-identify, your gross margin will swing depending on which units you sell first. Talk to your bookkeeper about flagging the cost basis change so you do not chase a phantom margin trend in August.
Second, the Section 232 reset added duties on some categories (steel, aluminum, copper, semiconductors) that did not have them before. If you sell hardware, kitchen, fitness, or consumer electronics, recheck the HTS classification on every inbound. Brokers have been getting these wrong since the February executive order, and overpayment is just as common as underpayment.
My quick rule: if your average unit landed cost has moved more than 8% in either direction since January, your retail price needs a fresh look before you commit Q4 inventory. Not because you have to change the price, but because the unit margin assumption in your buy plan is probably off.
The June 16 estimated tax decision
Q2 estimated taxes are due June 16. If you used the safe-harbor method in April (110% of last year’s tax), keep using it. If you used the annualized income method, redo the projection now.
OBBBA made the QBI deduction permanent at 23% (up from 20%). That alone is worth around $700 to $1,200 in tax for every $100,000 of qualified business income, depending on bracket. If your bookkeeper has not pushed that into your projection, your Q2 payment is overstated. Pulling that back reduces the cash you tie up with the IRS for the next nine months.
On the other side, if you are sitting on a tariff refund expectation, do not assume it lands in 2026. Plan for it as 2026 income in your projection, then adjust in Q3 if the timing slips.
The two-minute check: take your 2025 tax liability, multiply by 27.5% (instead of 25%) because Q2 is the catch-up quarter, then back off 3% for the QBI permanence and roughly 1% to 2% for OBBBA’s other small-business provisions. That is your Q2 payment ceiling. If your accountant is recommending higher, ask why.
What to actually do this week
- Call your customs broker. Ask for the protective refund claim status on any IEEPA-period entries. Ask for the current Section 232 and Section 301 classification on your top five SKUs by import volume.
- Pull your top three financing balances with their effective APRs. Calculate the annual interest cost. If it is more than $25,000 a year on the total, get on a bank’s calendar to discuss a line of credit.
- Rerun your Q2 estimated tax projection with QBI at 23%. If you are overpaying, file a smaller Q2 and keep the cash.
- Lock down your Q4 inventory plan, but build a 10% reserve into the SKU count for cost basis volatility through August.
- Update your reforecast model with the new tariff line items, the new financing assumptions, and the QBI change. If your model still says “December 2025 plan” at the top, throw it out and start over.
The Fed cuts and the tariff reset are not abstractions. They show up in your June P&L, your July cash balance, and your December tax bill. The sellers who do the math this month will be in a meaningfully different position by Q4 than the ones who do not. The math is not hard. The discipline to actually sit down and run it on a holiday weekend is the part most people skip.
Want a second set of eyes on the reforecast? We do these mid-year resets with clients every June. Reach out to your ECOM CPA contact and we will set up a working session.
