#44 Q & A Tuesday 3

Q1: As UK / international sellers on Amazon US, do we have an obligation to collect and remit Sales Tax? It seems to be a very murky topic with no clear and definitive answer. There are companies like TaxJar and Avalara who make a very convincing case that international sellers do have to collect Sales Tax, but they have a vested interest in telling people that. In reality I wonder how many international sellers actually collect and remit sales tax.

Are there any unbiased official guidelines for international sellers regarding sales tax? Also, this is to international sellers: do you collect sales tax? And if not, why not? 

There's seems not to be enough clarity among the US Tax authorities. This is a new situation for State tax authorities- Tax Nexus is hard to determine because often the inventory is stored in an Amazon warehouse in one state but the customer is in another.

A lot of UK based ecommerce or online sellers are not too worried. Mark from Avalavara wil be on the podcast soon.

A halfway house is to set up on Amazon that you will collect sales tax. This will either increase your price a bit or decrease your profits so plan for this.

Sarah Anne:

Hello. We are pretty much ready to roll with our first product which is a baby product for the US. It is very simple and made of silicone, but I have become worried about making sure that our product and its labelling conforms to US safety standards. I have been doing some Google research this morning but does anyone have any advice about this? Have any of you launched a children's product before?

I have not sold in the Baby category, so this is general commonsense advice. Ask around in the FB group, there are other sellers in the Baby Category.

Re product itself, I would go back to your supplier and check they conform to standard safety Regs for USA. They will probably have had this Q before especially if they are experienced exporting to the USA. If they have any documentation, get copies and keep them, in case of any issues down the road.

 Re labelling I would ask Amazon Seller Central in the first instance. Amazon is fairly tight about sticking to legal regulations so if it conforms to Amazon's regs, there's a good chance it conforms to the legal norms too.

If in doubt, get some moderately priced US legal advice from someone like Legal Zoom.