Amazon FBA Sellers: How Marketplace Facilitator Laws Remove Your Florida and Georgia Filing Obligation

FBA Inventory Creates Physical Nexus Automatically

Physical nexus — the pre-Wayfair standard — still exists alongside economic nexus. Owning property in a state, employing workers there, or storing inventory in the state all create physical nexus. When you ship inventory to Amazon FBA, you lose control over where it goes. Amazon distributes your products across its fulfillment network to optimize delivery speed, which means your inventory may sit in warehouses across 20+ states simultaneously.

Each state where your inventory is stored is a state where you have physical nexus. This is not a gray area. States including Florida and Georgia have explicitly confirmed that third-party warehouse inventory — including FBA inventory — constitutes physical presence for sales tax purposes. You do not need to own or lease the warehouse. You do not need employees in the state. The inventory alone is sufficient.

This means that the economic nexus thresholds ($100K in revenue, 200 transactions) are largely irrelevant for FBA sellers. You already have nexus through physical presence. Economic nexus matters for sellers who have no physical footprint in a state — purely digital sellers, dropshippers, or merchants who ship from a single home-state warehouse. FBA sellers bypass the threshold question entirely because Amazon's distribution network gives them physical nexus from the first unit stored.

How Marketplace Facilitator Laws Shift the Obligation

Marketplace facilitator laws solve the impossible compliance problem FBA created. Before these laws, every FBA seller technically needed to register for sales tax permits in every state where Amazon stored their inventory, then calculate and remit tax on each order. For a small seller doing $50K/year on Amazon, that could mean 20+ state registrations and filings — a compliance burden that would consume the entire margin of the business.

Starting with Washington state in 2018 and completing with Missouri in 2023, all 45 states with a sales tax (plus Washington D.C.) enacted marketplace facilitator laws that shift the collection and remittance obligation from the third-party seller to the marketplace itself. Under these laws, Amazon is the “marketplace facilitator” and is legally responsible for:

• Calculating the correct sales tax rate (state + county + city + special district) for each order based on the ship-to address
• Collecting that tax from the buyer at checkout
• Remitting the collected tax to the appropriate state and local taxing authorities
• Filing the required sales tax returns on the facilitated transactions

From the seller's perspective, this eliminates the direct filing obligation for Amazon-facilitated sales. You do not register, collect, or remit for orders placed through Amazon.com. Amazon handles the entire tax lifecycle for those transactions.

This is why the title of this article says marketplace facilitator laws “remove” your filing obligation — but only for sales made through Amazon. The distinction between Amazon sales and off-Amazon sales is where most FBA sellers get tripped up.

All Five Tier-A States Are Marketplace Facilitator States

Every state in the Tier-A set — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Arizona — has an active marketplace facilitator law requiring Amazon to collect and remit on facilitated sales. Here is how each state's law applies to FBA sellers:

The uniformity here is the good news for FBA sellers: if you sell exclusively through Amazon, you do not need to register or file in any of these states for your Amazon sales. Amazon handles the entire obligation. This is a massive compliance simplification compared to the pre-marketplace-facilitator era when FBA sellers were technically required to register in every state where inventory was stored.

High-Threshold States: 2026 Transaction Count Rules for FBA Sellers

Beyond the Tier-A states, FBA sellers with significant off-Amazon revenue need to track the high-threshold outliers. Texas, California, and Tennessee all use a $500,000 revenue-only threshold with no transaction count — your off-Amazon direct sales are the only ones that matter. New York is the exception: it requires $500,000 in revenue AND more than 100 transactions (conjunctive AND rule), measured over the preceding four sales tax quarters.

For FBA sellers, this means marketplace-facilitated sales through Amazon do not count toward any of these thresholds. A seller doing $800K total but $600K through Amazon FBA has only $200K in direct-channel revenue — well below the $500K line in all four states. The practical implication: most FBA-primary sellers can defer registration in TX, CA, TN, and NY until direct sales alone cross $500K, even if FBA inventory creates physical nexus in those states. See our $500K vs $100K threshold comparison for the full state-by-state breakdown and registration-priority matrix.

What You Still Owe on Off-Amazon Sales

Marketplace facilitator laws only cover sales facilitated through the marketplace. The moment you sell through any other channel — your own Shopify store, eBay, Walmart Marketplace, wholesale to retailers, direct invoicing to customers — you are the seller of record and fully responsible for sales tax compliance on those transactions.

This is where FBA inventory creates a serious problem. Because Amazon has distributed your products across fulfillment centers nationwide, you have physical nexus in potentially 20+ states. For your Amazon sales, that nexus is covered by marketplace facilitator collection. But for your off-Amazon sales, that nexus means you must:

• Register for a sales tax permit in every state where you have nexus (through FBA inventory or economic nexus from off-Amazon revenue)
• Configure your off-Amazon sales channels to calculate and collect the correct sales tax rate at checkout
• File sales tax returns in each registered state on the required schedule (monthly, quarterly, or annually depending on volume)
• Remit collected tax to each state by the filing deadline

Note that some marketplaces besides Amazon also qualify as marketplace facilitators. Walmart Marketplace, eBay, and Etsy all collect and remit in most states. Check the state-by-state marketplace facilitator breakdown to confirm which platforms handle collection in which states. Your own website and direct wholesale channels are never covered by marketplace facilitator laws — those are always your responsibility.

Pulling Remittance Certificates from Seller Central

Amazon provides documentation proving that it collected and remitted sales tax on your facilitated transactions. This documentation is critical for audit defense — if a state questions why you did not remit tax on your Amazon sales, you need proof that Amazon handled it as the marketplace facilitator.

To access this documentation in Amazon Seller Central:

• Navigate to Reports > Tax Document Library in Seller Central
• Look for Marketplace Tax Collection reports — these show the tax Amazon collected on your behalf by state and jurisdiction
• Download the Tax Calculation Report for detailed per-transaction tax data including the rate applied, jurisdiction, and amount collected
• For formal audit documentation, Amazon provides marketplace facilitator certificates that confirm Amazon's role as the collecting entity — these are available under Tax Settings

Download these reports regularly — at minimum quarterly — and retain them for the statute of limitations period in each state (typically 3–4 years, though some states extend this to 7 years in cases of suspected non-compliance). If you are audited, having organized, date-stamped documentation from Amazon dramatically simplifies the process.

Physical Nexus vs. Economic Nexus for FBA Sellers

FBA sellers often conflate physical and economic nexus, but they are separate tests and understanding the distinction matters for compliance planning — particularly if you sell through multiple channels.

Physical Nexus (FBA Inventory)

Physical nexus exists from the moment Amazon places your inventory in a state. There is no revenue minimum or transaction count. One unit of inventory in a Florida fulfillment center creates Florida nexus. This nexus persists as long as your inventory is in the state — and potentially for a reasonable period after removal, depending on the state's rules.

Economic Nexus (Revenue/Transactions)

Economic nexus requires exceeding a revenue or transaction threshold — typically $100K in revenue or 200 transactions in the lookback period. For FBA sellers, economic nexus is usually redundant because physical nexus already exists. But economic nexus becomes relevant in two scenarios:

• States without FBA warehouses: If Amazon does not have a fulfillment center in a particular state, you may still have economic nexus there from your sales revenue. Alaska, for example, has no Amazon fulfillment center but has local sales tax jurisdictions that apply economic nexus standards.
• After leaving FBA: If you switch from FBA to merchant-fulfilled shipping, your physical nexus eventually lapses — but economic nexus from your prior sales volume may persist.

For most active FBA sellers, the practical reality is simple: you have nexus everywhere Amazon has a warehouse. Marketplace facilitator laws cover your Amazon sales in all of those states. Your compliance burden is limited to off-Amazon sales in those states — and that is where the filing obligation lives.