States Collecting Online Sales Tax from Out of State Small Businesses

States are trying a variety of methods to obtain back sales taxes for products sold on Amazon marketplace.

What’s Amazon marketplace, a place where small businesses can sell their products to a larger audience.

So, are the states trying to collect back taxes from out of state small businesses or Amazon?

• California Department of Tax & Fee Administration  is trying to collect from small businesses for sales back to 2012
• Other states taking the California approach: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin

What are small businesses saying?

• They have an Association: Online Merchants Guild
• The Online Merchants Guild says online sellers on Amazon are more like suppliers than small businesses as they have no control over where their products go
  • It’d be like going after black and decker for sales tax at a Home Depot

Which states are trying o recoup back sales taxes directly from Amazon and not the small businesses that sell on Amazon? South Carolina

How’s that going for South Carolina? It is in the courts

How are states trying to fix this legislatively?  Marketplace facilitator laws, which have been passed in 33 of the 45 sales tax states

Route Fifty | States Go After Small Businesses on Amazon—and Sometimes Amazon—for Millions in Back Sales Taxes