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Amazon will start collecting sales tax nationwide starting April 1st

Amazon will start collecting sales tax nationwide starting April 1st

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The final five states have been added to the list

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One of Amazon’s biggest early advantages over brick-and-mortar retailers will disappear for good next month. The company will on April 1st start collecting sales in the states of Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, and New Mexico, according to a report from CNBC. That means Amazon will collect sales tax in all 45 states that require it, ending one of the company’s more drawn-out regulatory fights that the e-commerce giant had resigned itself to losing years ago. (For the record, Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon do not have a state sales tax.)

Amazon first began relenting on the sales tax issue when it began opening fulfillment and data centers around the country to speed up shipping times and build out a more robust physical network. Simply by having a physical presence in certain states mandated that Amazon had to start collecting sales tax, while in other situations the company worked out deals with state governments to arrange for the collecting of sales tax on online purchases.

More recently, Amazon has been more diligent about moving to collect sales tax in the remaining holdout states, adding 10 more states effective March 1st. Now, with the addition of the final five, Amazon is finally on par with its physical counterparts. Yet it’s quite unlikely the company’s growing dominance in all forms of retail will be curbed by a brick-and-mortar chain any time soon.