Open the Amazon settlement report and there it is: sales tax, collected by Marketplace Facilitator. Many Taiwanese sellers see that line and cross US sales tax off the list entirely. Half of that crossing-off is right; the other half is premature — the platform collects for platform orders, not for your company’s whole American tax life.
Why states drafted the platforms
Whether and where sales tax reaches you turns on nexus — covered in the nexus article, not repeated here. States confronted a practical reality: chasing hundreds of thousands of overseas marketplace sellers one by one is hopeless, but the platform — large, visible, and going nowhere — is an ideal collection agent. Hence Marketplace Facilitator laws: when a platform lists your goods, facilitates the sale and handles the money, the platform must collect, file and remit for every marketplace order. Essentially every sales-tax state has now passed one — which is why the tax vanishes from your reports without you configuring anything.
Which channels count
The test is facilitation plus money handling, not brand recognition:
- Count: Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, eBay, Etsy, TikTok Shop — third-party marketplaces where the buyer orders on-platform and money flows through it
- Do not count: Shopify-class storefront tools. They build your shop; the orders are your own website’s orders, and collection plus filing land back on you — the single most-stepped-on misconception
- Not applicable: B2B sales to US supermarkets and distributors for resale — that is the resale-certificate lane, unrelated to facilitator law
What remains yours after the platform collects
The real second half of the article. Platform collection covers exactly one thing — tax on platform orders. Three obligations stay with you:
- Your own website’s orders: the same customer buying on Amazon is covered; buying on your site is your duty — the better your DTC channel performs, the bigger this tail grows
- Platform sales still count toward thresholds: most states include facilitator-collected sales when computing your economic-nexus threshold. Cross it, and your registration obligation stands — regardless of who remitted the tax
- Registered means filing: in states where you are registered, even a period where every order was platform-collected and you owe zero still requires a zero return in most states — the penalty for skipping is for late filing, independent of tax owed
One sentence: the platform saves you the work of collecting and remitting; it does not save you the identity obligations of registration and filing.
Read the obligation map before the channel map
Whether to push your own site, which states your inventory should sit in, how channels mix — each carries a different tax shadow, and where the goods sit, the tax follows. SKYCARGO INC handles the logistics side of that map — placement, import and warehousing; the filing side belongs with your accountant. Talk to us. (Personal shipments: Shiptw.)
General information only, not tax advice; facilitator laws and thresholds change by state — consult your accountant under current state law.
