Do I Need a Sales Tax Permit to Sell on Amazon? A 2026 Guide for New Sellers

The short answer

Amazon is a marketplace facilitator. Every state with a statewide sales tax has passed a law that puts the collection duty on the marketplace, not on the individual seller. So when a customer in Ohio buys your product, Amazon calculates the tax, charges the buyer, and remits it to Ohio. You do not file anything for that sale.

That covers the vast majority of what a new seller does. If Amazon is your only sales channel, you are not running around registering in dozens of states.

Where it gets less clean is your home state, your supplier relationships, and any selling you do outside Amazon. Those three things are what this article is really about.

• Amazon collects and remits marketplace sales tax in all states that have a sales tax
• Five states have no statewide sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon
• Alaska has no state tax but some localities impose their own
• A permit is a state registration, not something Amazon issues or requires from you at signup

What changed, and why old advice is wrong

If you read a blog post or watch a video made before marketplace facilitator laws rolled out, you will hear that FBA sellers need to register everywhere Amazon stores their inventory. That advice used to be the standard answer. It is no longer how the system works for marketplace sales.

The reasoning was that inventory sitting in a warehouse created physical presence, and physical presence created a filing obligation. States then decided it was far easier to collect from one company handling millions of transactions than from hundreds of thousands of small sellers. So they rewrote the rules.

Be careful with anything you read on this topic that does not name marketplace facilitator laws directly. It is probably out of date.

When you actually do need a permit

There are four common situations. Most beginners hit at least one of them.

First, your home state. Some states want you registered even if the marketplace is doing the collecting, because your business is located there and they want the sales reported on a return, even a zero return. Rules vary a lot by state, so check your own state's department of revenue page rather than assuming.

Second, buying wholesale. To buy inventory tax free from a US supplier or distributor, you give them a resale certificate. In most states that certificate is tied to a sales tax permit number. No permit, no certificate, and your supplier charges you sales tax on goods you are only going to resell. This is the single most practical reason a new seller gets registered.

Third, selling outside Amazon. A Shopify store, a Walmart account, a wholesale order to a local retailer, a booth at a market. Those sales are yours, not a marketplace's. Once you cross a state's economic nexus threshold, or you have physical presence there, the collection duty is on you.

Fourth, states that require registration for other reasons, like a general business license tied to a tax account. Again, this is state specific.

• Home state rules: check whether your state expects a return even when Amazon collects
• Wholesale buying: a resale certificate usually requires a permit number
• Off Amazon channels: your own site, other marketplaces, local sales
• Some states bundle sales tax registration with business licensing

How to register, and what it costs

You apply directly with your state's department of revenue, taxation, or equivalent agency. It is an online form in almost every state. You will need your business name and structure, your EIN or SSN, an address, a description of what you sell, and an estimate of monthly sales.

Many states issue the permit for free. Some charge a small fee. None of them need a third party service, and the paid services that offer to do this for you are charging for a form you can complete yourself in under an hour.

Once you hold a permit, you have a filing obligation. That is the part people forget. Even with zero taxable sales because Amazon collected everything, the state usually still expects a return on schedule. Miss it and you can pick up penalties for a return that would have reported nothing. Set a calendar reminder for your filing frequency the day your permit arrives.

Sales tax is not income tax

These get mixed together constantly. Sales tax is money you collect from a buyer on behalf of a state. It was never yours. Income tax is on your profit and goes to the IRS and, in most states, to the state too.

Amazon handling sales tax does nothing for your income tax. You still report your Amazon earnings. Amazon issues a 1099-K based on your gross unadjusted payments, which is a much bigger number than what you actually take home, because it sits before fees, refunds, and ad spend. Your bookkeeping is what bridges the gap.

Keep those two systems separate in your head and in your records. A CPA who works with ecommerce sellers is worth the fee here, and this article is general information, not tax advice for your situation.

What to do before you launch

A reasonable order of operations for a first time seller looks like this. Decide on your business structure and get an EIN. Open a business bank account. Check your home state's rules on whether a seller with marketplace only sales needs to register. If you plan to buy from US wholesalers, get the permit so you can hand over a resale certificate.

Then go back to what actually determines whether the business works: the product. Registration is paperwork you finish in an afternoon. Picking a product with enough margin to survive Amazon's fees, your landed cost, and returns is the harder problem, and it is the one that decides the outcome.

Run the numbers on any product you are considering before you order a single unit. If the math is thin at the sourcing stage, no amount of tax setup fixes it later.